I spent two years living in a foreign country learning a new language (my first foreign language) immediately before I started learning to program and it's always struck me how similar the two experiences are.

All good communication comes first from good thinking. Whether or not we can communicate in a certain medium (speaking a language, writing, painting, music, programming) depends entirely on how fluently we can translate our thoughts into that medium.

So good thinking + good understanding of programming concepts = good code.