The SQL example is rediculous. I wasn't a programmer when I decided to use SQL, but learned it to be better at my job. After I learned it everyone else thought what I could acheive was magic. I only had read access so I had to be able to perform advanced subqueries, windowing statements , etc. After a couple of years my skills could embarrass most programmers in the company (minus the Oracle dbas). This is because the programmers wanted to write SQL in a proceedural way using plsql and were never very comfortable with set theory.
This knowledge expanded my power within a mutibillion dollar company and I went from temp analyst to director of supply chain business system and informatics within 3.5 years. I also decided to learn python due to the data libraries, and my power grew more as I automated most routine processes in my department. I required every employee of mine to learn SQL and gave them 3 hrs every Friday for self study. Our supply chain went from being ranked 340 in the country ( for our industry) to the within the top 10.
Don't tell me non programmers can't learn SQL. Also these DSL get people like me that should of gotten a CS degree the experience and confidence to get deeper into programming. Now I write python and clojure. In fact, because I have deep domain specific knowledge in supply chain I can apply my programming in ton of different ways. I find most corporate programmers have all these skills and either don't really know how to apply it to really help the business, are too lazy and think of the business stakeholders as a annoyance, or just do their job and go home.
I think it is going to be hard to bea white collar worker in the future if you don't know how to program.