Absolutely not. It's better to have a goal-oriented (or project-oriented) mindset and learn along the way! And contribute to Open Source. Every great opportunity I've had in life was through Open Source.

I told my son no 😬 I said communication skills and creativity skills would be more valuable with basic understanding of development being only moderately beneficial. We'll see where we are at in two years when he hits college age.

Credentialism makes no sense, but is it worth understanding the fundamentals and how computers and networks work? Yes.