Coding doesn't necessarily involve time deadlines, and maybe cooking doesn't either, although it seems to. I agree with the rest of what you said though.
Rule 11213: First person to mention "time" when linked article does not include the term "time" takes 1 step backward, 1 step forward, 2 steps backward, 1 step forward, 3 steps back. Back to the future.
"If the mayor of NYC wants to learn to program in his spare time, why the hell not?"
I agree totally, not only would it be good for him but it sets a good example for his constituency (because as a basic competence it is good for anyone).
I'm not trying to be facetious, just misunderstanding whatever point original commenter is making. "Most people don't what programming even looks like"? I don't think that is true because most people can search for code samples if needed.
As opposed to a professional "coder"? (I also see "programmer" as a more distinguished title and I prefer it to "coder" (and even "software engineer"), but I don't understand any of these terms to have any generally-accepted definition; personally it is only a matter of taste.)
I don't understand the distinction you raise in the first paragraph. Coding is programming. Just because everyone can divide doesn't mean everyone is trying to be a mathematician, but I think everyone should (at least have the opportunity to) learn long division. Programming may not be the fourth "R", but maybe "Research" is!
"Can you explain to me how Michael Bloomberg would be better at his day to day job of leading the largest city in the USA if he woke up one morning as a crack Java coder?"
If anything should trickle down, it would be the joy and satisfaction of acquiring a basic competence.
This is nonsense. It's absurd for you to argue that the difficulty of writing "Hello world" on an Apple device is somehow a good thing for Apple or anyone else on the basis of a wishy-washy concept like "abstraction".
It is possible to find the median in linear time (quickselect). Pivoting on the median makes quicksort optimal (O(n log(n))) while only using constant space. This is rarely used in practice because the overhead is large compared to the probability of being given a worst-case problem.
It is already reduced to the initial handshake. That is exactly what a CA does. But perhaps you are right that a CA should sign certificates based on influence-weighted pseudonymous votes rather than simply receipt of payment! Should CA's require payment in bitcoins?
"We did this by computing the greatest common divisor (GCD) of all pairs of moduli from RSA public keys on the Internet." For your key to be safe from this method, all you need to do is choose the factors of the modulus uniquely, not even necessarily randomly.