I actually am competent when it comes to computer programming, but I've learned (through painful experience) that I have to develop a completely parallel set, t

I actually am competent when it comes to computer programming, but I've learned (through painful experience) that I have to develop a completely parallel set, totally unrelated to ability to actually program a computer, in order to convince anybody that I am. Real, professional computer programming that produces a tangible, usable result for a person tends to be a fair amount of: reading over documentation to gain a deeper understanding of the problem domain; settling on a mix between a quick, dirty, "brute force" solution and an elegant solution; aiming for a target, missing, and adjusting until the target is hit. We actually joke amongst ourselves about this ("I just cut and paste from stack overflow all day") but I have to be VERY careful how I present the actual truth about how I approach computer programming problems to people who've never tried it. I have to pretend that programming computers breaks down to discrete, easily-estimable "tasks" that can be performed linearly or even in parallel, but each of which takes up wall-clock time.