I have seen recent graduates (last 10 years) with a distinct lack of understanding of programming fundamentals. These people were writing software!!!

There is a reason that I was taught different languages through my 8 years of full time Computer Science education. Different languages solve different types of problems and also show different ways of doing things. Some of the simpler free form languages, such as Pascal, make for an excellent basis in learning to program as it allows for discussions and demonstrations on the importance of naming, code structure, comments, format etc. As a previous contributor said, C/C++ (amongst others) allows for performance tuning, memory management and algorithm evaluation. Nowadays I would expect to see OS scripting taking a more formal approach (*nix shells and PowerShell should not be considered anything short as being part of a systems administration or specific scripting module). Teaching someone to do a simple type of application development closely coupled with a particular framework is very short sighted.

Programming is not going anywhere. I have heard that no-one was going to be coding in the West for decades now. Demand has not really decreased. It will if there are no decent coders left. On the job learning is fine but there needs to be an academic foundation too. I am not prescribing full time education but I believe that that too has its place.