Learning Programming for Curiosity or Necessity?

The speaker suggests that learning programming should be driven by curiosity rather than fear of falling behind in the job market. Programming is deemed more akin to a fun and sci-fi pursuit, rather than a necessary skill for professional advancement. The comparison is made between learning programming and using a calculator in mathematics, highlighting that it may not be as directly useful for a software engineer currently but could have a significant impact on the job market in the future, similar to the effect of early compilers or SQL.