I wonder how large the proportion of social scientists is who actually know that Python is a programming language.
(I am a social scientist myself).
In my own experience, it is already pretty hard to teach them R.
In my own experience, it is already pretty hard to teach them R.
Ideally, science/engineering schooling (college and up) should not allow anyone to graduate without knowledge of at least one general purpose programming language. But in the meanwhile, those who can program while working in another field - whether sociology or environmental engineering - have an enormous advantage.
Programming is becoming an essential tool for scientists and engineers and it isn't taught it enough. Interestingly my mother was taught Pascal back in the day when she went back to Uni to study Environmental Science as an undergrad, looking back on it I am most impressed.