[randomfinn]

Knowing the basics of programming can be a great tool in a lot of professions.

I watch my wife perform a lot of tasks with spreadsheets to accomplish things her coworkers can't do (or would require a lot of manual work). Being able to import CSVs, do calculations, mail merges and other simple data processing may allow you to skip a lot of tedious manual work.

Programming is the next step. She would benefit from being able to write scripts to query different systems and then process more data than is practical in a spreadsheet, or do more complicated processing than a spreadsheet allows.

It's not something everyone needs (just like spreadsheets, or even calculators), but it can let you get a lot more done in many non-tech professions.