Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet, argues that software developers should take responsibility for the vital role they play in a digital society, and individuals need to be aware of the basic digital literacy skills we need to possess in order to be programmers, not just subjects who are programmed.

Turkle rightly asserts that such familial association is what we will all come to have with machines, and that children are the only ones who understand it right from the start. Children recognize the powerful magnetism of robots that are programmed to respond to human affection (by purring, chatting, batting eye lashes and so forth). Some of them say that they would like to give a robot as a companion to their grandparents, but worry that the grandparents might prefer the robot to them in the long run.

Java is “heavyweight, verbose, and everyone loves to hate it,” but Wall still thinks you should know it.

“A big part of what makes Ruby so special to work with is just how much expression you can pack into a few lines of code,” says Hansson.