Coding classes in Lincolnshire

Boole wrote that the symbols of logic obey the law x² = x, and that among numbers "there are but two, viz. 0 and 1" that do the same. The learner begins by checking this in Python: of every whole number from minus five to five, only 0 and 1 equal their own square. So true becomes 1 and false 0, "not x" becomes 1 minus x, "x and y" becomes x times y, and "x or y" becomes x plus y minus x times y.

Now the rule. A fete committee agrees that the fete goes outdoors "if it is dry and warm, or dry with the marquee up, as long as the field is not waterlogged". The poster printed a shorter version: "outdoors if it is dry and warm, or the marquee is up, as long as the field is not waterlogged". Four yes-or-no facts give sixteen possible days, and the program tries every one.

The two days of disagreement are both rainy days with the marquee up and the field fine: the committee says indoors, the poster says outdoors. Nobody reading the two sentences quickly would notice. The tidied version, which takes "dry" out as a common factor exactly as you would in ordinary algebra, agrees with the committee on all sixteen days. And the last row shows a classic bug. Writing "or" as plain addition gives the value 2 on the one day that is dry, warm, with the marquee up and the field fine, which is neither true nor false. Boole saw the same trap: he wrote that x + y "seems indeed uninterpretable" unless the two classes share nothing.

Checking every case is completely reliable, but it doubles with each new yes-or-no fact. Twenty facts mean 1,048,576 cases and forty mean 1,099,511,627,776. That is why engineers who check the logic inside chips use cleverer methods than listing every row, and why simplifying a condition by algebra first is a skill worth having.

So a young person in Lincolnshire should learn to code in 2026 to check whether a neat rewrite still says what was meant. The longer argument is in why teenagers should still learn to code in 2026.