Stefan Mileschin

Creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, said that some people do not need to learn basic programming skills.

The idea is being touted by those who think that programming should he taught alongside learning to read, write, and do basic adding up.

Torvalds said that the concept is silly and he did not think that everybody should necessarily try to learn to code.

The skill is reasonably specialised, and nobody really expects most people to have to do it. It's not like knowing how to read and write and do basic maths, he said.

Getting some form of exposure to it would be good, since it would allow those who have an interest to be able to identify that interest and foster that and turn it into a skill, which could ultimately lead to a career in programming.

In that sense computer courses in schools are a great idea, even if he did not believe in the "everybody should learn to code" thing.

We guess he means that if you learn it at school you will hate it so much that you will never want to do it again. There is also the risk that what you learn in school will be so out of date that you might as well never have bothered. Sheesh my computer studies teacher insisted that we learn Pascal and most of my six form life was spent searching for missing semi-colons.

http://news.techeye.net/software/som...ode-says-linus