Those are simple states - binary on/off states for the lights, etc. It falls apart fast when you start trying to explain actual engineering stuff in plain Engl

Those are simple states - binary on/off states for the lights, etc. It falls apart fast when you start trying to explain actual engineering stuff in plain English: iterations, complex nested conditional logic, error handling, massaging and sanitizing data, etc. You could describe each of those steps in English, but what have you gained at that point? You've still had to express all of the same exact complexity, but you've done it in a language that is far more clunky than a programming language designed for the task. It's like trying to tell a musician how to play one of Beethoven's symphonies using English instead of sheet music. Even if you could, why? You've expressed the the same exact thing, but in language that is orders of magnitude clunkier.