[einhverfr]

My viewpoint is that I think everyone should learn a very very very basic level of programming and for two reasons:

1) Those who like it will take it further.....

2) Even writing a trivial program requires getting certain sorts of thought processes right. Once you can write trivial programs you may not be valuable as a programmer, but you will be empowered to interact with computers if you ever find yourself in your chosen work on a tangent where that's helpful.