Things you're not taking into account: 1. Basic knowledge of programming gives you better odds of successfully interacting with specialists. 2. Specialist

Things you're not taking into account: 1. Basic knowledge of programming gives you better odds of successfully interacting with specialists. 2. Specialists are not always available. 3. Specialists are not always affordable. Just because there's somebody who's out there that can do it better doesn't mean that's the one true answer--I can damn well try to stop the bleeding before I seek a trauma doctor, to use an example. In day-to-day life, learning just enough Ruby or Python or Perl to scratch an itch or Access to make a (terrible) DB is quite acceptable.