I'm in a position where I need to describe what coding is like to someone else. I've been programming since I was 13, so I understand it at a level that is hard to put into words, let alone describe to someone else. My latest attempt is as follows: "Coding is like working in another language. Just like spoken languages, programming language each have their own grammar and keywords. Reading code and understanding it is like having to translate a document." However, I'm not bilingual, so I was wondering if someone who was could tell me if this is a reasonable simulacrum. Especially the comparison of effort and difficulty between grokking code and successfully translating documents.