[cycomanic]

As a fellow scientist I wholeheartedly agree! I find that programming skills (and willingness to improve on them) are strongly correlated to success as a (experimental) PhD student, much higher than mathematical abilities. The ability to automate your experiment or do a quick simulation is a huge productivity boost.

However, the programming education in science degrees is absolutely appalling. Just show them how program a newton raphson method in matlab (without any considerations for performance) and expect them to know how to program.