I Wanted to clarify that my "yes" to "does learning to program make you a better person" probably meant something pretty different to me than to everyone who heard it. It was not at all a criticism of anyone who hasn't learned programming, and I wasn't defining "better" in terms of ethics, or relative to other people. Rather, I was defining it relative to the same person without the experience, and measuring it by the implications it has on the brain:
Learning to program taught me to think. It taught me to understand the world. It taught me to believe in myself. It answered my philosophical confusion. It enabled my artistic expression. It taught me rigor. It taught me how to think in abstractions and under them and across them. It gave me an avenue to have an impact. It showed me that I can do anything. It taught me not find the delight in failure rather than internalize it, it taught me that there aren't right ways to do things, only compromises across tradeoffs. It taught me that there is no magic. It taught me curiosity.
Maybe it's because I struggled more than Lori and Rachel and Fred, so overcoming that deficit was more impactful for me than others, but I can't think of any other domain with a set of characteristics that could ever hope to do as much.