A good leader doesn’t ask people to do something they themselves wouldn’t do. If the leader has no clue how to code or debug then they have no clue what they are asking their subordinates to do. That is a horrible way to lead in my opinion.
That's nonsense. A CEO cannot be a jack-of-all-trades and has to lead a large organization and direct many people to do things that they, themselves, cannot do.
And scaling back, a manager of a cross-functional team is at a similar disadvantage. I work in a field where we mix ME, EE, CS/Software Engineering, IT/Ops, and other fields. A team could consist of people from all disciplines. Hell, right now I am learning the basics of astrodynamics so I can write the software related to it, the lead is an AE and can't code to save their life. They're still an effective leader.
In a previous team, the lead could not manage a Linux server, but still had sysadmins in the team. Did that make them an inherently bad leader? No, they deferred to the expertise of those team members. Like a good leader.
