Alright, I've been reserving judgement on this issue for a while. I've read the posts of Jeff Atwood imploring the masses to keep away from the code. I've also seen the video where Gaben says if you learn to code, you'll become a wizard. Up until recently, I more agreed with Mr. Atwood. But then a few nights ago, I re-watched the movie "Angels & Demons" where the following scenario takes place:
A canister of antimatter has been stolen by criminals. The canister is set to explode in a few hours. If the device explodes, the city will be wiped out. The police have a video feed to the canister.
So, what do the police do? They figure that they can find the device by turning off the lights to sectors of the city, and seeing whether the light goes off in the video feed. Sounds good! Except they turn off the lights in order... one by one.
If there were a Com Sci first-year in the room, he/she would blurt out "Are you kidding me?! Do a binary search!!", and the movie would only last half an hour.
Learning to code efficiently is also learning to think efficiently, and finding shortcuts to make your work easier. Coding definitely isn't for everyone, but I really don't want to get blown to hell just because nobody in a room took Algorithms 101.