Interesting thread... another perspective to add perhaps.

I don't code applications. I can code the mess out of things within a browser environment using CSS and HTML (and some shreds of JS) to pretty much build or prototype anything. My graphic abilities range from still loving hand drawings with charcoal and colored pencils (still life flora and hands usually) to photo manipulation for various items in any graphic editor (PS, Gimp, Illustrator, Flash, Inkscape, etc.). While I would love to code applications, mentally, I get a weird block in doing so (impatience plays in here), and usually end up on tangents asking of the value of my input towards the output's aims.

On the other side of that I read about 300 websites of content per day; read a few books per month (always non-fiction), and given the most minimal of facts can usually spot patterns, processes, and failure points towards subjects that I know well and don't know well.

I graduated high school in 1997 (Texrat graduated when I was born, yikes); by the time I got to that point, the impression that you needed to solve problems with varying styles and types of computing knowledge wasn't just something that became clear, but curriculums were under heavy pressure to change - if they had not already. While I only got regular use of a home PC in 1996, it was right before I graduated college that it started making sense *not* to have PC labs on college campuses. What's the solution to enabling a fuller education when things change that quickly...

...and because of how fast things have changed, those with the skills to measure and control change were best positioned to adapt to the changing type of life choices that would be presented. Elementary and high schools are only just getting the types of teachers and tools that are able to teach towards solutions, versus just teaching the tools and hoping that the students meld these into solutions. The tools teaching is indeed lacking, but that's only because the attention to what the solution is hasn't kept up with it.

Whether that makes kids lazy because they can't code or not is up for debate. But given the intellectual capacity for change and solutions-driving that we do, we can't say that the ball is in someone else's court to change the output. We have a (significant) say on the input after all.