To a computer scientist "programming" is simply a means to an end. Computer science is a rich field. Equating programming to computer science has been the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the field, and in my opinion why so many people flunk out of the program. When I was in school the first and second semester were filled with people who wanted to be programmers (for the money) and got blown out by the operating systems course. I can probably count the times on one hand where I did any programming in my undergrad. Most of it was in graduate school to verify algorithms.
And when someone claims they "think differently" and they are therefore more suited for computer science, I cringe.