[notacoward]

Because "programming plus $domain" is going to be the skillset to have for their working lifetimes. The other domain can be just about anything. Any kind of engineering, obviously, plus any kind of science, business, medicine, even law. (In fact, between mining legal opinions from the past and building algorithmic contracts in the future I think law is an especially good one.) Even in more trades-oriented work, a little bit of programming to plan and lay things out can be a competitive advantage. Unlike programming in tech itself, which tends to put us all on an update treadmill, programming in other domains is something you tend to do once and benefit from forever.