As a developer who also knows plumbing (and other trades), I'd beg to differ. When I talk to neighbors and friends, most of whom are highly "technical", they look at me in disbelief when I suggest they resolve a plumbing (or carpentry or mechanical) issue on their own. I get the "I have no idea where to start", or "I don't have any tools", and so on. It's not a lack of available information, it's the fear, in many cases extreme fear, of the ramifications of not "doing it right": a flood in the house, a wall that collapses because you hacked through a supporting structure, an electrical short that burns the house down, and so on.

You build a website and maybe it doesn't work right (has bugs). In most cases, no one dies or gets hurt. You mess up plumbing, electrical, etc and that's not the case at all. It's easy to look down on the non-technical trades since we live in a time that glorifies (like the OP says) the art of programming. But next time you have a major plumbing issue, your heat pump goes on the fritz, you car dies on the highway, consider how helpful it is to know RoR, Java, C#, etc. Not too much...