Well, not too long ago I posted my dilemma about me being very business oriented and having design skill, and still not being able to find programmers as they were turned off.

And the majority of the replies I received were ones telling me to learn how to program.

Just because I'm learning to code doesn't mean, however, that I am tossing my other skills away. I find that I have a much much much better understanding of the mechanics behind apps and that at the very least, i'll be able to connect on a much deeper level with another programmer if I were to assemble a team and not take a significant programming position.

You're right, perhaps he may turn out to be an awful coder, but at the very least, establishing a common thread of communication by which a programmer can relay his concerns to a designer or a marketer, and for them to understand, in my opinion, is pretty valuable.

I think kyro is 100% right on this point.

I learned to program just for these exact reasons (better understanding of the problem domain for a business, better communication with technical staff, etc.) By all rights, I should be the absolute worst programmer in the world. But based on unofficial world rankings, it turns out that I'm only in the bottom five ;-)

Programming skills (however limited) and business savvy are a very potent combination. I don't regret learning to code at all...

I think that you have to learn how to program because if you don't need the skills in your day to day work, at least you need the skills to judge correctly how much work a given task takes, and to understand the possible complications of the process.

Even if someone isn't cut out to be a great programmer, it will help a lot to have done some programming. Jobs wasn't a hacker on the scale of Wozniak, but it helped him a lot to have done some technical work. He was not just a suit.