By Ellen Ullman, from Life in Code, which will be published next month by MCD, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Ullman is a former computer programmer and the author of three previous books. Her article “Programming the Post-Human” appeared in the October 2002 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

I dare to imagine the general public learning to write code. I do not mean that knowledge of programming should join the ranks of subjects that represent basic literacy: languages, history, philosophy, the fundamentals of science and mathematics. I mean it the other way around. I hope that those with…