So here's the thing. For whatever reason, roughly 80% of any given task can be accomplished without too much advanced knowledge. That probably seems like a gross oversimplification but if you think about your day, how much of it could someone else do with some rudimentary instruction? Now granted: the roughly 1/5th of your day that requires your advanced knowledge and experience will likely tear down all the good the 80% has (and then some). More importantly, you as an expert likely have a sense of where the dividing line is: they won't be able to fly the plane into the ground if you hand the stick over at 30,000 feet but if you go take a leak while you're on approach, there might not be a cockpit to come back to once you've zipped your fly.

The people you deal with? Yeah. Nearly all of the stuff they're asking for they can handle. But they don't believe that. More than that, they don't feel familiar enough with the technology to be able to distinguish between the stuff they can screw up and the stuff that ends up as twisted metal.

Dollars to donuts every single one of them has a story where they were simply following directions on the Internet and before too long they'd BSOD'd the entire lab. "How to" and "network" often give you results involving "sudo" which gives you dire warnings about passwords and thermonuclear armageddon and frankly? Scaring people who don't have the confidence to hack at root keeps a lot of trees from dying.

I find that the more intelligent a person is, the more weight they give to the risks of attacking something they don't understand. And unlike you, they didn't grow up with it - they were peacefully typing on an email and then all of a sudden they need to figure out what Dropbox is. Before too long they're expected to screencast their lectures and have their notes up on Canvas and every year brings yet another digital encumbrance that they're having to integrate into a practice that was working just fine, thank you very much. And really, it's all just an excuse to be laughed at by the people who understand it. You say "learn coding." They hear "learn Hindi." How do you start that? And how do you keep the nose up while you're doing it? Because if you're doing it on work stuff at least you're getting paid, but you're also likely to go Tango Uniform. If you do it in your off hours you now have a thoroughly lame hobby.

I think you're right - if you can't code under 50 you're screwed. But I also think that you can make your own life a whole helluva lot easier if your instinct is to sherpa them through the nasty bits. You have a skill they don't and if you can be open and forgiving and friendly about their shortcomings they will come to you for help and it's always great to have a superior that depends on you for the stuff they're too embarrassed to be able to figure out.