Most schools view computer programming as just a technical ability. Steve McIntosh challenges today’s school curriculums to view computer programming as a substitute for foreign language in that it has quickly become essential to society. Steve McIntosh is a senior at The Miami Valley CTC where he is in the Game Programming & Web Applications class. He recently led a team to compete in the Miami Valley Teen Coding Challenge, where they took 1st place for “Project Bloodhound”, an NFC based tracking system. He enjoys programming, especially in Java, and solving problems. He hopes to move forward into software development or cyber security. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx