I don't care about programming per se, I think it is a mistake of all of us to think that we need to teach programming. We should teach something so that kids who walk away from there, from this middle school, never program again but become doctors and journalists and artists, take something out of that thing - that synthesis of math and programming.
And what you don't know - what I'm talking about, here is the bottom line, I mean bottom line as in money. There is a longitudinal study by the US, the DOE, Department of Education that predicts if you understand the the concept of function, under all other circumstances equal, your income will be higher at 30.
Your understanding of the concept of function at middle school predicts your income at 30.
big-bang: the world, universe, and network in the programming language (2015):
I suspect he is referencing this 1997 study Mathematics Equals Opportunity