How important is computer science knowledge to physicists?

I'm currently a 2nd year physics student, and I'm trying to decide on which electives I should take to prepare myself for graduating, and eventually finding a job. My question is: how important is computer science knowledge to a physicist? I ask because, I have been looking at some co-op education jobs with my university, and a good percentage of them have programming as an application requirement (usually Java). The thing is, I am just finishing off a computer science/Java programming cl, and I absolutely hated it. It bothers me that it's entirely man-made, with no mystery about it whatsoever. I rather spend my time investigating... well, the world of physics, I guess. But it seems that programming is a good skill to have nowadays, and I'm rather torn! Any advice?