> For example, it's more likely you'll say something like 'give candy to these kids' or 'wash these cars' than 'give a piece of candy to each kid' or 'wash each of these cars.

True but for more complex instructions, it’s common to say “do these things for that kid, then do that for all the kids”, which is pretty much a for loop. I can’t speak to how common this was in lay speech before programming was common though.

(There was an earlier thread about this but algolia’s search UI suddenly became a pain to use on mobile and it’s too tedious to find.)