So FreeCause has an initiative to make all its employees learn how to code. Not that everyone will join in developing production code, but they have to learn the fundamentals. In their case, they use Codecademy which teaches JavaScript. Despite some of the bellyaching on Hacker News, this makes sense to me for a number of reasons.
- This can help people understand the tools that could assist them with their normal day jobs as they gain the confidence to look into writing scripts and macros. IT staff in particular frequently lack any coding (scripting) skills unless they are developers or Unix sysadmins.
- They will have a better understanding of the web technologies they run across in their daily lives. This applies especially well to Codecademy users who learn JavaScript.
- Learning to code teaches you to break a problem into parts and think analytically. We can probably all agree that our society could use more people with good critical thinking skills.
- Everyone in an enterprise should have a core understanding of the elements of major functions. Yes, this means programmers should understand the very basics of finance and human resources and probably other areas that don’t occur to me at the moment.
There are two kinds of elitism: One is the belief that only the most informed and qualified individuals should make the decisions for a group. The other is the belief that those who do not belong to the "elite" have no business even dabbling in affairs beyond their supposed comprehension. The latter isn't healthy for any organization, much less broader society, but walking a mile in your neighbor's (or co-worker's) shoes can have lots of positive effects.