What most schools don't teach

Programming is important because it teaches you something: AUTOMATION.

If you can show your employers that you can automate your tasks and make your whole department 2-3x more profitable for them (hell, even 10% more profitable), you just made yourself an indispensable employee. Software can do that.

I use programming to make myself far faster at work. I'm at least twice as productive simply because I know how to write code.

Also, programming can apply to almost anything and everything you do in the business world because there are a lot of things that need automation.

These damn computers stealing our jobs!