Parsing is the fundamental task of programming: taking information, performing a transformation on it, passing it along.

If you can't do it you might use computers but you're not programming.

Tuning DE solvers might take as much skill, or more, than getting context free string parsed, but it's not a skill that is used outside of numerical computing. DBAs aren't called programmers for a reason, but they are no less valuable for it.

The same applies for every niche skill that takes years to develop.