In one of the Regulations of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education one can find an appendix which defines standards of education for the Geodesy and Cartography of the first level of studies, also in terms of computer programming. The author of the article has for many years combined teaching programming with engineering practice and he has no doubts that it is essential to teach future engineer surveyors how to write computer programs. However, the advisability of teaching programming sometimes raises concerns both among some students and academic teachers. The method of solving problems which was used during the process of numerical map modernization, described in the article, is in the author's opinion a strong argument in favour of advisability of computer programming education . The company run by the author has performed works which aim was to improve the cartometricity of a numerical map which contained selected objects of geospatial data. Meeting a deadline of the works would have been impossible without some tiny applications facilitating unnecessary works. After the works had been completed, it turned out that the applications shortened the time of making the modernization by 1/3 and what is more, knowledge unnecessary to make the applications is mainly the same that students can get during the computer programming course run by the author.