I have a talk in which I argue that if you can program, you have a huge advantage in learning statistics because you can simulate random processes and tinker with them to get an intuitive sense of the statistics involved.

At Data Driven NYC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfSM45ncAT8 Keynote at Strata+Hadoop World 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dnw46eC-0o