Not every coder job involves working in a blue chip tech company or Silicon Valley startup.

As British technologist, Conrad Wolfram said in a TED talk on teaching math with computers: “In the real world math isn’t necessarily done by mathematicians. It’s done by geologists, engineers, biologists, all sorts of different people.”

The same applies for computer science. Just ask Alex Tran, fellowship program manager at Code for America, a nonprofit “civic startup accelerator” that sees coding as a new form of public service. Each year, he works with more than 20 startups and fellows who build a variety of apps and online programs to improve how citizens engage and interact with their communities. So far, they’ve built tools for services like community disaster management, food stamps, virtual townhalls, student data interoperability, and even snazzy icons.
“Coding literacy is a huge part of our future as a country, and it will be integrated into every aspect of our government and every other sector that people will work in,” says Tran. “In the future, there will only be more opportunities for young people to go into careers where technical and public sectors intersect.”
Computer science is transforming industries--and igniting a renaissance in the creating of things. Just as in the 1950s, when writing and communications skills became the essence of the paradigmatic "white collar" job, increasingly every artisan, manufacturer, and entrepreneur who makes something will need to code.

Mitchel Resnick, director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, calls coding “an extension of writing.” Mashable describes it as “21st century literacy.” Just as we write words to map and make sense of ideas, we code to organize and present data in meaningful ways. We write to tell our stories through essays and articles; so, too, do websites and apps offer their own narratives about the world. Like writing, coding can help channel our creativity and solve problems. (And both “good” writing and coding ought to be elegant, clear, and concise.)

At a deeper level, the push to introduce coding to younger students reflects a larger, back-to-the-future movement to return creativity, tinkering, and exploration to the learning process. There’s been a revival of Makerspaces and other garage workshops that use hands-on activities to turn abstract principles into tangible objects. After all, one can read about trigonometry in a textbook--or go create a cell phone case from a 3-D printer.