Theoretical Concept: Coding for non-coders

[jas58]

Building upon a discussion about threshold concepts for novices.

I don't have a suggestion to link to, but hope someone can guide:
How to teach a novice the "coding" mindset? That is to say: what abstract/theoretical/real world story or analogy could be part of the first 3 hours so someone could reasonable make that step from "deathly afraid of the command prompt" to "oh, I have to be logical, explicit, and strategic in translating my thoughts to a computer algorithm" but without the jargon or assumptions about any of those words.

And is it a step too far to ask that the episode be program or environment agnostic, so it might work for both R and python flavors?