i'm a scientist and i think that they/we should learn to program. the problem is diminishing returns and relevence. e.g. i can spend 100 hours learning how to say hello world and figure out if something is a prime number OR spend some time in the lab and maybe write a paper/presentation. i've kept an eye on programming for a while now but always find myself bored with if/elif but not able to figure out how to make the leap to the stuff that i want to do - and then not having the time to dive in fully. catch 22 i guess. would be happy to comment further if anyone's interested.