**TL;DR - Coding is an important skill to have and students should learn about it early on** Learning programming in early primary education can have several advantages. If done correctly, coding can put children through experimentation builds, helping them understand sequencing skills, counting, problem-solving, logical thinking, cause and effect, and critical thinking. Additionally, children can find expressive avenues through code and learn to create games, apps, and websites or to even control robots and machine learning. Introducing coding and programming students early on to children will help them feel more comfortable with computers and information technology. Programming should be added to the list of skills schools need to expand on to help students expand their career potential with learning a foreign language and ethics in history.

**Rather than coding and programming languages, students should be taught the creative ways of thinking that underlie coding.** - Teaching coding and programming to students on a language-based level would probably mean a focus on rules of programming syntax - so pretty technical stuff. For one thing - technology changes very quickly. [Some tech experts] (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm) believe that with the ever-growing development of advanced coding software, human coders will soon become obsolete. Kids could be being taught what will effectively be a dead language. - Besides this - if someone does become a coder when they grow up, it might not be the most beneficial thing for them to have been learning programming languages since they were young. There's potential for rigidity and decreased ability to adjust to the changing tech climate. Compulsory education should be primarily about developing critical thinking skills - through basic subjects like Maths and English. It might be more useful for students to encounter and learn about coding at a graduate level, where they would not only be engaging with up-to-date software but where they could also apply a broader and more general skill set to new areas of study. Also - coding and programming are just not likely to appeal to some, if not most, young students. Making it a compulsory part of the curriculum seems unnecessary. - [This article] (https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/12/against-teaching-kids-to-code-creativity-problem-solving.html) talks about how coding and programming materials aimed at young students generally present coding as "a set of problems with 'correct' solutions." Its writer argues that being a programmer is actually less about the syntax of code and more about the ability to creatively problem-solve. As they put it: "When we force kids to learn syntax, we reinforce the idea that if something is not a blatantly employable skill, it's not valuable. Adults can learn syntax. Only kids can learn to embrace curiosity." They also advocate for encouraging students to experiment, dive deep into problems, find interesting and unique solutions - skills that can be learnt in any number of ways that doesn't directly involve encountering codes.