While this is a good thing my immediate concern is that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
The good side is that it will help him understand how coders working under him operate and that's great, but I'm not sure it's the most efficient way to get that knowledge. Simply listening to them (and their managers / team leads), maybe reading a couple of books on the subject would allow him to understand that in a way a bit of hobby programming simply won't.
The downside is that the lessons you learn as a beginner don't automatically scale to larger projects of the sort his development team(s) are working on. I've seen a business analysts who could code a bit, or managers with outdated skills, sell a development team down the river making assumptions based on what they think they know.
So yes it's good, but it's good with caveats.
Knowing how to develop is correlated with being a good manager of developers but it's not the only way to get some of the skills you need and, at this point in his career, it may not be the best way and certainly won't teach him everything he needs to know.
The good side is that it will help him understand how coders working under him operate and that's great, but I'm not sure it's the most efficient way to get that knowledge. Simply listening to them (and their managers / team leads), maybe reading a couple of books on the subject would allow him to understand that in a way a bit of hobby programming simply won't.
The downside is that the lessons you learn as a beginner don't automatically scale to larger projects of the sort his development team(s) are working on. I've seen a business analysts who could code a bit, or managers with outdated skills, sell a development team down the river making assumptions based on what they think they know.
So yes it's good, but it's good with caveats.
Knowing how to develop is correlated with being a good manager of developers but it's not the only way to get some of the skills you need and, at this point in his career, it may not be the best way and certainly won't teach him everything he needs to know.