If you have no interest in learning programming then don't waste your time on it. Use your time for better things. Just hire someone to do the things that are needed and beyond you at the time. There is an endless amount of affordable labour on the net.

If you want to do it yourself then get something simple for creating sites. There are many free open source applications that you can use to put up web pages or of course paid ones like xsitepro. Many webhosts have free website builders that you can use as well.

Learning depends on the time you have to consume..If you're in a hurry then just outsource everything because learning is just searching for tutorial which you'll just need search engines or tutorial sites

If you want to learn anything relevant when it comes to SEO, you definitely don't need to learn a programming language. However, it will be very helpful to understand at least the basics of HTML, which is not a programming language, but is the most basic fabric of the web.

The more you know the better. You should know the difference between tags and attributes, and be able to call each part of the document by its proper name. You should be familiar with META elements including the http-equiv META elements.

You really need to be familiar with HTML attributes such as the 'alt' attribute for images and 'title' attributes for other elements. These are important for supplementary information on web pages, and are read by search-engine "spiders". If you start calling these 'alt tags' and 'title tags' you'll either confuse professional developers or at the very least not impress them.

In addition to just being familiar with the function and structure of HTML code itself, you should be familiar with basic HTTP protocol, especially concerning Location headers and status codes such as 301, 302, 404. Understanding at least the basics of the Linux operating system with an Apache server would be helpful for your career, or Microsoft servers if you end up working for a company that goes that way.

The most important thing to understand about SEO, is that it is, at its very core, still just marketing. Most common sense marketing principals apply to the web as well. So while technical strengths such as the ability to understand code are only going to help you, don't forget that what you're doing is marketing and selling products.

You need to understand enough to make things work - the end. Figure out how much that is by getting started.

Want to build a website? Use wordpress - and then you really don't need to know much.

Want to make your own - learn enough html/css to make it look the way you want.

Want to add forms? Learn some php till your form does what you want it to.

Want to outsource -- learn enough that you can ask for what you really want.