But for what it's worth, I think a working knowledge of the gnu utilities is worth more than most programming languages to most people. (If you're on a system that supports *nix utilities.)
Ideally it's not an either or thing.
With my comment, I wasn’t trying to contradict your original comment. I was just trying to reword the concepts to be more specific. “Everyone can script” was meant to be a more specific version of “Everyone can program” that might convey the concept better to those who shared or at least understood my definition of “script”.
http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php
The best way I know short of immersing yourself in a community of *nix geeks for a long period of time.
If you were looking for something more grandmother or time friendly, I'm afraid I can't help you.