Things in network are changing quite fast. There is more to SDN but programming is quite becoming the key to managing networks simpler and faster. Another reason to learn programming is that there are software engineers who develop network/ storage software and test them. The future is programming of course with networking skills too. 

Search for software defined networks (SDN), they will ask you to write a program (instead of some commands on CLI) in Python, Java or C++. Even in Virtualization or in Cloud Computing (Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS) where they managing VMs in a large number based properties. For example VMware PowerCLI in VMware ESXi or JSON Query for managing CosmosDB in Microsoft Azure.

The move towards using API interfaces is one of the more striking aspects of SDN that has been picked up quickly. Instead of forcing information to be input via CLI or information to be collected from the network via scraping the same CLI, APIs have unlocked more power than we ever imagined. RESTful APIs have giving promising programmers the ability to query devices and push configurations without the need to learn bulky syntax. The ability to grab this information and feed it to a network management system and analytics platform has extended the capabilities of the systems that support these architectures.