I've been asked by many people, do you need to be a programmer to be a pen tester? This is one of those questions that will spawn a variety of passionate answers from purists of all kinds. Some people say that you can't be a true hacker without being a skilled programmer. My view is that the definition is less about a specific skill than about comprehension and mentality; hacking is a problem-solving personality and a lifestyle. That said, let's be honest: your progress will be hampered by a lack of working knowledge in some programming and scripting. Being a pen tester is being a jack of all trades, so we need to have some exposure to a variety of languages, as opposed to a developer who specializes. If we were to pick a minimum requirement on the subject of programming and pen testing, I would tell you to pick up a scripting language. If I had to pick just one scripting language for the security practitioner, I'd pick Python.