People can and will learn to program if it starts to seem like that's a valuable skill.
But they won't tho', not really. In the dotcom boom there were plenty of such people who learnt HTML and were (well) paid for it for a couple of years. But they didn't or couldn't make the jump to possessing a skillset that kept them in the industry after the meltdown. The guys with C++ or Sybase or whatever under their belts, just kept right on truckin'.
Hacking is starting to be a new literacy. What's more, the most important part of startups isn't really programming, which is getting easier and easier, but understanding customer's problems. Here a wide range of backgrounds are useful.
But they won't tho', not really. In the dotcom boom there were plenty of such people who learnt HTML and were (well) paid for it for a couple of years. But they didn't or couldn't make the jump to possessing a skillset that kept them in the industry after the meltdown. The guys with C++ or Sybase or whatever under their belts, just kept right on truckin'.