2. Why Learn Programming?

That's a good question but as you're look at this material you already at least have some ideas... Yes, it's a learning curve for sure but the advantages of knowing a bit of programming are numerous:

• Make your life easier - avoid repetitive and monotoneous tasks
  • Create a web page to easily and automatically compile daily, weekly, or monthly reports
    • Use hypertext markup language (HTML; a formal language but not a programming language), cascading style sheets (CSS), and JavaScript (a programming language) for to create the web page and handle user input (select what report to create, what time period, etc).
    • Your request for report is sent to the web server using hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP; or the secure variant HTTPS)
    • Use PHP (a programming language) for web server programming and structured query language (SQL) to extract information from database
    • Final results - your report - is sent back to the web browser also using HTTP/HTTPS.
  • In MS Excel, use conditional statements in formulas (e.g. =IF( test, if true do, else do ) ).
  • Collect evidence, analyze, and create a report in EnCase (digital forensics application) using EnScript® scripting language
• Add new functionality (e.g. a new function in MS Excel) or improve existing functionality.
  
  • =solveWorldCrises( do_now=true, include_politicians=false);
• Personal satisfaction
  • Learn something fun and challenging!
  • Learning programming will help you in many other general tasks (daily, business, operations,...) by training your logical thinking skills.
    • Syntax, grammar, and logic are important components of any language - natural (English, French, ...) or constructed (like programming
  • Art or Science?
    • This is sometimes a debated issue - but mostly for intellectual reasons, or by laymen with personal opinions.
    • In reality it's both an art - works produced by the conscious use of skill and creative imagination (google) - and a science - the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment (goggle). The creative imagination is what makes programming really fun - and challenging.
    • Google computer programming art or science
• Professional advantages
  • Become more efficient and productive.
  • Improve your chances for a job - or keeping your existing...Knowledge of programming is increasingly in demand also for non-programmers. (Check job ads in your field and look for things like "Scripting do files", "Visual Basic", EnScript)
     
  • CNN Money Magazine: Best jobs for fast growth (November 2011) - lists twenty jobs for the future.
    • Number 1: Software Developer

      Median pay: $82,400 Top pay: $118,000 10-year job growth: 32% Total jobs: 380,000   The job: As technology evolves rapidly, companies continue to need developers to design, test, and debug software programs for mobile devices and apps. Since the landscape changes so often, even longtime developers frequently need to retrain and learn new programs, lowering the barriers to entry for job switchers.   How to switch: If you have a technical background, all you need are self-study courses for vendor-specific program certifications. Tech newbies should start with a programming course at a local college.

    • Multiple other of the top jobs include programming / benefit from knowing programming (in bold): 2. Physical Therapist, 3. Financial Advisor, 4. Civil Engineer, 5. Marketing Specialist, 6. Management Consultant, 7. Information Technology Consultant, 8. Database Administrator, 9. Financial Analyst, 10. Environmental Engineer, 11. IT Business Analyst, 12. Business Systems Analyst, 13. Software Dev. Engineer, Test, 14. Systems Administrator, 15. Employment Recruiter, 16.Certified Public Accountant, 17. Structural Engineer, 18. Web Developer, 19. Market Research Analyst, 20. Staff Accountant.
       
  • DiceTV: The Skills to Learn in 2011 (new tab/win):
    • Mobile Operating Languages
    • Project Management (MORE) (CR001)
    • Programming & Application Development
    • Virtualization - comgt.com/virtual
    • Business Intelligence & Analytics
    • Web 2.0
       
  • Hot skills, ComputerWorld:
    
    11 hot skills for 2011 - ComputerWorld, Sep 13, 2010

    1. Programming and Application Development
    2. Project Management
    3. Help Desk/Technical Support
    4. Networking
    5. Security
    6. Data Center
    7. Web 2.0
    8. Telecommunications
    9. Business Intelligence
    10. Collaboration Architecture
    11. Business Acumen and Communication Skills

    9 hot skills for 2012, ComputerWorld, Sep 2011

    1. Programming and Application Development
    2. Project Management
    3. Help Desk/Technical Support
    4. Networking
    5. Business Intelligence
    6. Data Center
    7. Web 2.0
    8. Security
    9. Telecommunications

    10 hottest tech skills for 2016, ComputerWorld, Dec 7, 2015

    1. IT architecture (new)
    2. Programming/application development (#1)
    3. Project management (#2)
    4. Big data (#10)
    5. Business intelligence/analytics (#7)
    6. Help desk/technical support (#3)
    7. Database administration (#6)
    8. Security/compliance/governance (#4)
    9. Cloud/SaaS (#12)
    10. Web development (#5)

    (Last year's position withing parenthesis.)
     
  • Most Common Tech Skills from Dice Feb-Mar 2011 (latest http://marketing.dice.com/techtalentdemand/):
    • J2EE/Java - programming language
    • Oracle - database
    • C, C++, C# - programming language
    • SQL - structured query language
    • Windows - operating system
    • Unix - operating system
    • Linux - operating system
    • HTML - hypertext markup langauge
    • JavaScript - programming language
    • XML - extended meta language
• See a few job ad examples >>>

As you can see, there are many good reasons for learning more about languages - programming and other formal languages, like SQL, HTML, and XML.