There is a practical side to this conversation that I haven’t seen addressed directly: namely that the ability to code greatly increases your value to employers. Sure, this value may be totally misplaced, overrated, etc. but the fact remains that I see tons of job postings in all sorts of technical and non-technical fields that either would like to see coding experience, or outright require it. And if you are in any sort of science, engineering, or other technology-related field, you absolutely should know how code works, and we all know the best way to do that is knowing how to code.
It is not surprising to me that Google—a massively successful company—would like it if their secretaries and HR people know how to code. Call it CS arrogance, but they hire these people in droves because even if their jobs don’t involve writing a single line of code, they know how it works, what it does, and are therefore better able to perform their jobs.
