I don't think the message us technical guys are trying to get across is that you need to become one of us and strive for the full ability to implement your idea all by yourself. Hell, the less people that are awesome programmers the better, keeps us in high demand.

After my experience with a very-non-technical co-founder before, I dont think I would ever again agree to work with someone who couldn't at the very least know how to read the source code and manually tweak database entries. Working with someone who has read the basic rails tutorials makes it infinitely easier to communicate and mutually understand technical and temporal restrictions on a product in development.

I'm a programmer, but I sure as hell read Inbound.org, dribbble, forrst, and other sites besides just technically oriented ones so I at the very least can use the same vocabulary to describe and understand what a a partner is doing and why they're choosing to do it that way. I expect anyone I work with to be similarly versed.