My brother, a successful (good pay, high responsibility, prevents things from blowing up) mechanical engineer, doesn't really understand programming beyond html

My brother, a successful (good pay, high responsibility, prevents things from blowing up) mechanical engineer, doesn't really understand programming beyond html basics. Talking about how we both go about doing time estimates once, he said, "you know, I never really thought about it, but you're paid to do things that haven't been done before"