Arkansas may be one of the last states that comes to mind when you think of major hubs of tech talent. And yet, last month, it became the first to pass a truly comprehensive law requiring all public and charter high schools to offer computer science courses to students, beating better known tech centers like California and New York to the punch.

If for one reason or another you've been following local Arkansas politics, this should come as no surprise. During his run for governor last November, Governor Asa Hutchinson made computer science education for all one of his core campaign promises. "It's probably the first time in the history of politics that the word 'coding' was used in a political commercial," Hutchinson tells WIRED.

It's not because Hutchinson, former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, has a personal passion for coding (he confesses he only recently learned what "Javascript" is), but because he believes fostering a generation of computer science-savvy graduates will give an unprecedented boost to the Arkansas economy in years to come.

"Whether you're looking at manufacturing and the use of robotics or the knowledge industries, they need computer programmers," he says. "If we can't produce those workers, we're not going to be able to attract and keep the industry we want."

The Call for Coding

That computer science ought to be a fundamental part of every child's education was once a refrain sung only by the Silicon Valley set. Now, however, it's being echoed by government officials from both sides of the aisle, in every corner of the country, and even at a federal level. Just last week, President Obama announced the launch of the TechHire initiative, a new program that aims to connect more people with coding classes and more employers with this new cohort of tech workers. As the president noted in his speech, two-thirds of the country's tech jobs exist in non-tech industries, meaning the need for tech talent extends to places that aren't necessarily nerve centers of tech activity, like, well, Arkansas.

"People don't realize in every single state and every single industry there's a shortage of computer engineers and software engineers," says Hadi Partovi, co-founder and CEO of Code.org, a non-profit organization that advocates for computer science education in schools and builds tools to help students learn to code.

Learning to use Facebook is far less educational than learning to make the next Facebook. Hadi Partovi

According to Partovi, other states have taken half-steps toward similar legislation. South Carolina, for instance, lists "computer science" as a high school graduation requirement, but that credit can be filled by learning basic skills like keyboarding. Other states require tech education courses, but Partovi says, that can mean something as simple as learning to use social media. "Calling it 'computer science' is confused," he says. "Learning to use Facebook is far less educational than learning to make the next Facebook."