In my opinion, writing software requires two "primary" skills.
A) A student needs to be able to map real world systems to a computing device. This requires a lot of critical thinking and is basically the process of automating a real world problem.
B) A student needs to be able to code out the problems they have solved above.
Where it gets difficult is that students are usually taught how to code before they are taught how to do that mapping from the real world "thinking" to computer world "thinking". I feel their internal model of programming becomes tainted with concepts like scope, functions, methods, parameters, pointers, lists, arrays, data structures, inheritance, composition and so on. All useful tools, but hard to mentally picture without understanding why the exist.
I look at learning to code before learning to critically solve problems like learning all about a motorcycle without understanding it's purpose: to move you from one location to another. Sometimes, students have ah-ha moments and they would be like "Oh, now I see why we are learning about motorcycles. It is because we've learned about these roads things and we can use the motorcycles to move us from here to there using these road things we learned in a prior chapter".
Where it gets even more difficult is that students are often expected to learn how to think critically to do that mapping thing (A) and at the same time learn to code (B).
In my opinion, the optimal way to learn how to program would be to teach the critical thinking aspects and associated tools in A and then teach implementation (programming) in B (then alternate) with about a two week gap. One class on A, then two weeks later a class on B, then two weeks later a class on A.
This is an iterative approach to learning that allows students to master concepts in software development and then apply those new skill by programming (by coding or other means) solutions in a computing device.