as a "real engineer"(tm), (more usefully, someone who codes both for a living and as a hobby) let me give a very concise answer (I'd be willing to be more verbose, I have a lot to say on this matter, but I really think the core point is braindead simple Edit: don't mean to imply braindeadedness if you don't see it, but that once I saw it, it seemed elegantly and stupidly simple.):

Programming is more than any language, tool, or algorithm, it is a way of thinking.