And I didn't really want to learn programming, I still don't. I want to be able to read, understand and appreciate code and algorithms in general.

Lots of people learn programming because it's a useful tool for whatever else they're doing. Quite a few biologists, for example, learn Perl because it's the traditional bioinformatics glue language.

I would recommend that if someone can learn programming, then they should do it, preferably in a mainstream language like Python. It gives you all sorts of cool data-mangling powers. Actually becoming good at programming is less important, though still very useful.