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Learning to use computers is like learning reading and writing. Learning to program computers is like learning papermaking and typesetting and bookbinding. The metaphor does hold.

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I think in these metaphors it's important to draw a line somewhere between "to use" and "to program". That line isn't always clear -- the usual example being an Excel spreadsheet.

Using an application is like programming in its language of pushbuttons and input fields. Programming is like using a compiler.

Since when could books execute computations that their readers don't understand?

You could perhaps argue that books sometimes contain instructions that readers execute but don't necessarily understand.

True, but it misses the central point that books don't execute anything themselves, and so computers are fundamentally different from them.

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