That childhood native-fluency analogy is insightful! Your experience matches mine.
I started programming at age 7 and it's true that the way code forms in my head feels similar to the way words form when I'm writing or speaking in English. In the same way that I don't stop and consciously figure out whether to use the past or present tense while I'm talking, I usually don't consciously think about, say, what kind of looping construct I'm about to use; it's just the natural-feeling way to express the idea I'm trying to convey. The idea itself is kind of already in the form of mental code in the same way that my thoughts are kind of already in English if I'm speaking.
But... maybe that's how it is for everyone, even people who learned later? I only know how it is in my own head.
I totally get the same sense that I'm just "communicating" using code. I just write out the code that expresses the concepts I have in my head.
And at least some people clearly don't. I was talking to one guy who said that even for a simple for-each loop it was way faster for him to "Google the code he needs and modify it" than to write it. This boggled me. I couldn't imagine being able to Google and parse results and find the one I wanted and copy and paste it and modify it being faster than just writing the code.
Even famous developers brag about their inability to code. DHH (RoR developer) has a tweet where he brags that he couldn't code a bubble sort without Googling it. A nested loop with a single compare and swap...and he's "proud" of the fact that he needs to Google it?
I started programming at age 7 and it's true that the way code forms in my head feels similar to the way words form when I'm writing or speaking in English. In the same way that I don't stop and consciously figure out whether to use the past or present tense while I'm talking, I usually don't consciously think about, say, what kind of looping construct I'm about to use; it's just the natural-feeling way to express the idea I'm trying to convey. The idea itself is kind of already in the form of mental code in the same way that my thoughts are kind of already in English if I'm speaking.
But... maybe that's how it is for everyone, even people who learned later? I only know how it is in my own head.