As a side note..I'd like to say it's great to see people talking about Programming... I'm taking Computer Systems Technology (Network administration) and out of a class of 108 last semester when we did networking, I was the only person who saw a use for it in the network field.. We did VB .Net, they aren't even teaching us a dos/*nix console language. The general concensus around here seems to be that programming knowledge isn't needed in a networking.
You bring up a great point there..... that being network, or even better (in my opinion) security programming. There is a place for programmers outside of database architecture.

Here is a great site with a lot of information on security and security programming.

infosyssec