Have them pickup a pencil and stand up on it's eraser. Then ask them to describe what they did. "I took the pencil and I balanced it on the eraser" is usually a

Have them pickup a pencil and stand up on it's eraser. Then ask them to describe what they did. "I took the pencil and I balanced it on the eraser" is usually as deep as they go. Then describe what they did as a programmer would. 1. You extended your arm 2. Began closing your thumb and finger until they hit pencil 3. Lifted your arm to raise the pencil off the table 4. Rotated the pencil until it was perpendicular 5. Lowered your arm 6. Stoppped lowering your arm when the eraser hit table 7. Opened your fingers 8. Check to see if the pencil was balanced and if not try again Most people understand programming is instruction, but what they don't understand is the layered complexity. If you wanted to take this 'pencil' idea further you could say the only reason you aren't firing individual nerves to move the muscles for your fingers is because someone wrote a function for that already.