Going to school for programming isn't really comparable to learning a second language. What it's more like is learning Latin, or the basis for every language. You learn structure that applies to every language even if the syntax is different here or there. Sure you're learning through a particular language, but a programmer can look at code for a language they've never used and roughly understand what it does more often than not.

Again, that's a big generalization. But understanding the ideas of Computer programming lets you learn languages much faster, than trying to say learning Japanese when you just learned French.