[thenipper]

"Isn't there something to be said for that? Not every skill needs to lead directly to a job. Can't it just be another skill to have when you need it?"

Amen. I'm constantly writing little Ruby scripts to do some automated task, usually fixing CSVs or extracting data to load it in a database to compensate for crappy reporting in a tool I use. I suppose that this or my recreational Clojure programming is something I could turn into a job, but I prefer to have it be a tool that allows me to do my job better. Or to run better D&D campaigns...

There definitely is a divide between like software engineer, and say person who uses programming to make their job a bit more efficient. It seems as though everyone is representing it as a binary choice when as paulcole said it's more of a gradient.