Actually, my feeling is that you misunderstood Jeff. He makes a great point - we can't all be programmers, world needs people with all kinds of skills.
Jeff's point is that while certain tools (writing, arithmetic, etc.) are indeed of extremely relevant use no matter what you do, programming doesn't fall in that category, and anyone arguing that all should learn to code regardless of what they do is falling in that fallacy.
(i'm not saying I agree or disagree with that, that's just the way I perceived the post. That being said, Zed's post, especially the last paragraph, is of great value.)
You say one thing, then say another thing. The other thing kind of negates the first thing you said, so, by repeating the recipe, in a short while you have said everything about your topics and you have also said nothing.
Not all writers are like that of course.
It is perfectly possible to both learn programming and also have other skills. Who knows, maybe you'll be able to do something crazy like apply lessons from one field to another.