There are enough bariers in the earlier steps for those barriers to entry with programming not to matter. 1. Understand the problem 2. Break the problem

There are enough bariers in the earlier steps for those barriers to entry with programming not to matter. 1. Understand the problem 2. Break the problem into subproblems. Goto 1 till subroblems are small enought to be tackled. 3. Develop the algorithms for each of the subroblems you got after step 2. No handwaving allowed. 4. Implement the algorithms. I'd say for majority it ends around the step 2. Programming only matters at step 4.