True. And yet I played and watched just as much football as my brother when we were growing up - and as adults he spends every weekend watching the scores come in and watches every game his team plays. International games aside, football does very little for me. I prefer to spend my time doing other things that give me the same buzz he gets from that.

You can push a kid in any direction. And for some period of time, they might even get behind it. Doesn't mean it will develop to fruition (otherwise I might actually have something to show for those years of piano lessons!).

That is true, but a child is definitely interested/drawn to certain fields than others. I guess that is what your parent comment was referring to.

As a child, I was enrolled in some music classes when all I wanted to do was play Chess. My parents had good intentions, it sucked for me though.

Nobody is born with an interest in anything.. If my parents pushed programming on me as a young person I might not have enjoyed it as much as I do since learning it would be for them, not for me.

There is a difference between developing an interest in a child and forcing them to do things.

but given some experience with programming, writing, dancing or whatever they'll either like it, or not (or be ambivalent). At which point you should take that feedback into account.

Coding is as fundamental as learning to spell. Some things you should force your kids to do for their own good.

No, it isn't. It's very useful, but not as useful as basic communication. There's also some evidence that you need a certain aptitude to be able to code at all: https://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-f...

Forcing someone with no aptitude or desire to do something is just cruel.

Cruel? Cruel is setting your kids up for a life of struggle because they never learned basic skills.

As someone who mentors a little over a half dozen adults who are transitioning into technology careers (mostly programming, but not exclusively), I disagree on several points:

1. A lack of programming experience does not necessarily imply a life of struggle. Anecdote: Several of my friends work blue collar jobs (AC install/repair, but also an electrician), and avoid many of life's vices (alcohol, drugs, bad relationships with people with different personal values because they're easy to get into bed with, gambling, extreme religious devotion, the vindication of social media mob participation, etc.). I would call them successful despite not knowing the difference between a function and a method. (Successful enough, at least, to be homeowners in their young 20's despite growing up in poor families.)

2. Programming skill does not necessarily a life free of struggle. I know several homeless people with programming skills. Mental health (which is something our industry severely neglects!) brings its own struggles to the table.

3. Adults who take an interest in programming can gain sufficient aptitude to be valuable to organizations in a short time.

Forcing programming down a child's throat does them no favors.

You can be quite a success as a doctor without learning to code. And many other professions as well.

Not reading, writing, or knowing how to use a computer would be far more detrimental.

not learning to code is not going to be a handicap through life comparable to being unable to read or write. It just closes off certain professions. Is it cruel to not teach your kids stock portfolio management? Or is it cruel to force your kids to learn portfolio management long after they've expressed complete disinterest in it? I'd say the latter.

Everyone is grooming their kids for something. Most just do it passively.

My kids have complete disinterest in sports, yet they play something 3 days a week and are getting better.

This version of themselves will have a significant leg up on the version of themselves that never learned to be athletic and will struggle with obesity in their 30s.

No, it's not (and BTW you need to learn how to read in order to program, so you're statement is literally false). There are still plenty of ways to be successful in this economy without learning how to program.

Would you think lesser of people who don't have a software engineering background and chose, instead, to pursue other ambitions in their careers?

Programmer (among other things) here, and I have seen exactly this attitude among a not-so-small minority of those around me.

Sometimes I get the feeling (when often confronted with the whole 'everyone should earn to code' idea) that there is some articulated and unconscious ideological drive that dictates that we have finally invented a language can completely control all alternative, that is, that we're looking for a real version of the ancient memetic constructs from Stephenson's Snow Crash and that somehow the logic and linear bias of computer code makes it impossible for some so-called postmodern programmer to emerge, or something. [I also think about this when I hear computer majors complain that programming language classes should be count in place of foreign language ones.]

If they’re having a hard time making money I would think lesser of their parents who should have known better.

Abdicating responsibility for your child’s education is not noble.

First, there's more to life than making money. I want my kids to have a good life, but I define that as more than just making lots of money. Good money at a job they hate isn't what I want for them.

Second, software is not the one true path to making money.

> Abdicating responsibility for your child’s education is not noble.

Fortunately, I suspect that few parents will abdicate their responsibility by listening to your advice.

> A child isn't born with an interest...in crime

You've never observed a child walk over and just take a toy from another child? Good thing we teach them not to do that from a young age.