Sizing the U.S. Student Cohort for Computer Science

Alan Kay, Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway, and I had an article in the September 2019 issue of Communications called "Computational Thinking Should Just Be Good Thinking" (access the article at http://bit.ly/2P7RYEV). Our argument is that "computational thinking" is already here--students use computing every day, and that computing is undoubtedly influencing their thinking. What we really care about is effective, critical, "expanded" thinking, where computing helps us think. To do that, we need better computing. Ken Kahn engaged with our article in the comments section (thank you, Ken!), and he made a provocative comment: There are have been many successful attempts to add programming to games: Rocky's Boots (1982), Robot Odyssey (1984), RoboSport (1991), Minecraft (multiple extensions), and probably many more.