By learning how to translate an ancient language you gain a skill that can translate (with more effort) to programming, and I'd argue, but this is of course an untested hypothesis as any opinion on this matter, that this translation is better than learning directly. But let's assume you get even a sub par skill: I'm not saying it's a proxy, even simply beacuse you also learn something else that can be useful for something else.

It's perfectly fine that schools teaching programming directly without ancient languages exist. But why eliminate the possibility for a student to learn those languages when almost all people who did are happy with it? Anyway, I won't debate the matter further: my example is merely set to say that learning doesn't always have barriers as we like to think. Learning some greek and less math doesn't mean you won't ever be a mathematician.