> It is not practical to become a great doctor and a great programmer. > Those are but two of that millions of different jobs that are required for modern society to function.

Who said anything about being a great programmer? We have great writers, and believe me I'm not one, it doesn't stop all of us from gaining quite a bit from writing.

I'm not a native English speaker, I talk french. I'm far from great in linguistic, I'm not even great in English (my accent is atrocious and I require quite a bit of pause when I speak). Yet here we are and we both profit from me using that skill with you.

My sister has a criminology degree and one of her required class was SQL. She isn't a great programmer, yet she was able to use that skill to do more.

Personally I'm pretty sure programming should/will become a basic skill everyone will have. It doesn't means everyone will be great at it, it doesn't means it will fill every needs, but I believe almost everyone can gain from it. How many time have we used algebra in our daily life, I can count it without any hands for pretty nearly everyone ;) yet we all learn it. There so many time though that I saw people do repetitive tasks, that could be automated so easily on a computer, yet we don't learn that at school.

Not everyone will become full time programmer, but almost everyone can profit from that skill.