Writing is in many ways programming other people. It also has structure, function, and interaction. Not so different.
"Twain frequently read drafts of his work aloud to his family, judging its effectiveness by their ..."
There are actually programs, like IDEs, that will catch syntax errors and stylistic errors in writing. Executing the writing program is as simple as having the story read to you via a text-to-speech or human labor. That an end user doesn't appreciate the writing is no different than when a user of a UI finds it unintuitive.
What programs are you thinking of?