Like reading and writing, programming has become an essential fundamental tool to organize information. A few centuries ago, being able to write and read, whether in Spanish, English, or French, was a way to be valuable to society. Can programming skills be compared with what reading and writing meant in the past? Coding literacy goes along this line and argues that programming is augmenting what we usually refer to as “literacy” (the reading and writing of text).

Nowadays, computer code structures much of modern and contemporary communications. Coding literacy is about establishing a connection between programming skills and the health of a nation and its citizens. Programming has entered literacy, and as Annette Vee puts it, “How can we understand the ways that computer programming is changing our practices and means of communication?”

The book is organized into four main parts. The first part is a call to teach programming broadly, across society. It argues why “everyone should learn to code” in a convincing fashion. The second part explains how programming may be considered a “materiel intelligence,” which can be used to construct knowledge. The third part supports coding literacy by tracing a historical perspective of the evolution of computation and writing in society’s communication and information infrastructure. Building on the third part, Part 4 looks at the history of writing and computation, from their institutionalization to their domestication.

The book features a number of interesting points. First, the book covers many relevant topics in today” society. It encourages the phenomenon of programming becoming a more widespread and generally applicable skill, particularly outside of the computer science and software engineering curriculum.

Second, the book gives a perspective on why education matters to spread the ability of programming. It argues that this ability should be more equitably distributed, not only along gender lines but throughout the whole society. As programming becomes more relevant to fields outside of computer science and software engineering, the author advocates that it should be considered a transversal skill.

Finally, the book rephrases fundamental thoughts in computer science in an open and inclusive fashion. As the author points out,

Programming is often (though not always) taught in CS with abstract problem sets concerning the Fibonacci sequence and the Tower of Hanoi, which can make programming seem quite distant from art and science and language.

As a consequence, it favors inequalities, including the gender gap.

The book is written for a broad audience. Despite having “coding” in its title, it does not contain any piece of source code. Readers should therefore not expect deep discussions about the operational semantics of programming languages. Instead, Coding literacy is a remarkable essay on the role of programming in modern society.

I enjoyed the book very much. It is provocative and well written. It raises fundamental questions about the way we teach programming and the role of programming in society. The book also argues that “more accessible programming languages, libraries, techniques, and technologies will increase rather than decrease pressures on this new form of literacy.” As a researcher in software engineering and programming languages, I couldn’t agree more.

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