A while back Jared M. Spool made a much noticed observation in an interesting post regarding designers who can code .
It’s clear from our research that designers who can code bring more to the team and, in the long run, see more of their brilliant work making it through the development process, to the user.
The topic is still hot and dividing the designer community in a tabs vs. spaces way (if you don’t get that reference you are a non-programming designer).
Having programming skills as a designer will most certainly work in your favor both on the market place as well as on the job. The crucial thing though might not be having programming skills as such but something I call device proficiency.