Programming: A Necessary Evil for Amateur Game Designers?

What I'd like to ask is, "How do amateur game designers who don't know how to program and are not backed by a programming team, and who never get to see their ideas implemented a) find satisfaction or b) get better?"

I can see some of the satisfaction of brainstorming game design ideas that are never implemented. But, isn't there some frustration in not being able to see whether your ideas are actually succeeding or not? Which leads to the second part of the question: If you can't see your ideas in action, how can you ever know if they are "good" or not and learn what you need to improve? Also, how can you know what details your design is missing if you never get to see them implemented?

As a programmer and game designer, I can think of hundreds of things that I did not think about during design phase but was forced to think about during implementation. Every designer faces this (or else, after designers wrote design docs and implementation began, designers would simply leave the team. However, it doesn't work that way: designers have to stay to answer unforseen questions.)

So in the end, what I'm asking is: 1) Is it possible for game designers to get true practice and skills in game design without experiencing some implementation and going through the implementation process? And what I'm advocating is: 2) Perhaps anyone who's thinking about becoming a Game Designer should invest a year or two in learning some simple programming languages (Visual Basic, Dark Basic, etc.) which will allow them to implement their ideas and truly begin to understand Game Design. I also now understand why 3) Most game companies never hire "game designers" unless they have proven track records as either testers, programmers, or some other non-game design entry level position. Only through testing or programming can game designers begin to truly grasp what is needed for game design. Another idea is: 4) offer a course in game design that runs concurrently with a game programming course. The game designers write the specs, the programmers implement, the designers learn about details they failed to spec or understand (and learn if their design ideas were actually good or not.) A final idea is: 5) Can we get former game designers to review amateur game designer's ideas? Get people with experience to critique what others are doing wrong? Perhaps former game designers will become professors in the future... 6) Perhaps, if more aspiring game designers knew how to program, they could implement, by themselves, some of the more wacky ideas that game designers have. These would serve as proof of concepts that the ideas are good (or bad), making it easier for the designer to sell the idea and putting more pressure on the industry to be creative!

The idea for this thread came from another thread: http://www.igda.org/Forums/showthread.php?threadid=6563&goto=newpost.