So once some programmer writes the code/flowchart, and gives it you on a paper. Its supposed to converted to punch cards/switches/whatever and then fed to a computer. The difference between the former and latter now is huge. The latter job is now nothing more than being a glorified typewriting kind of work.
I realized this when I was doing some really complicated GUI work on an embedded system. I was programming all the time on paper, I was doing it a lunch table, during transit, thinking during shower etc etc. After working several papers worth of programming, I converted it to C code, a few hundred to may be a thousand+ lines.
The real job of writing C code was largely a ritual that took like a few hours. Working out the algorithm was real programming that spanned a few days.
I could see how early programming went. Plenty of algorithm writing and unit testing through induction on paper.