While perhaps not absolutely vital for most web developers, for computer scientists in general it is still important to highlight the basics of computation in context of other disciplines.

It’s historically important and interesting from that perspective but nobody is going to learn anything practical from it and it only serves to give some people justification in calling any possible use of gotos bad style. In terms of promoting innovation I think you could do better.

Programmers do spend time planning specifications but on a much higher level than most people ever need to train their minds to think at. Ever considered how amazingly abstract it is to write out a class diagram or component model? It’s a kind of organisational thinking which is closely analogous to corporate structure management and it’s extremely gratifying – which I suppose is why programmers are often accused of ‘over-engineering’ by hovering about in that stage for too long.

It’s a shame that the barriers to entry for learning to program still seem so high to so many people who might otherwise be interested. Compared to other disciplines it’s remarkably quick and easy to get to the point that you can basically make anything you want – and all the information to get started is right there on the internet!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect