From Slashdot, a physics professor gets upset that undergrad physics majors at his school aren't required to learn any programming. (Check out the comments for an interesting discussion.) To make matters worse, some faculty in his (her?) department argue that the physics majors only need to learn Excel, which just adds fuel to the fire:

In principle, as a spreadsheet with simple flow control in combination with visual basic capabilities, Excel can do many things at the cartoon level we care about scientifically. But I'm not interested in giving students toys rather than tools. As a scientist raised on a heavy diet of open source software and computational physics, I'll hang my head in shame if our majors start proudly putting Excel down on their resumes.

I'm surprised that a physics department thinks their students need less programming in today's computer-driven scientific world. I think we're reaching the point where programming is becoming essential for biology majors. If you're just starting out in biology now, you're guaranteed to need programming to handle and analyze large datasets, and in many cases to generate quantitative models. If you're majoring in biology, don't sell yourself short - learn to program now. You'll never regret it.