Programming in code is counter-productive for people with art-sided brains. The solution to this problem exists: graphical programming. But the people who need to implement this solution happen to be its worst enemies. Because to engineers, code-based programming beats everything.
I am totally with you on this. A while back I posted
some thoughts about this on my blog, and thought I don't know yet what the solution will be, exactly, I am on the lookout for projects that do it right and for ways that I might be able to make it happen myself.
It seems to me that every tool I've found just takes normal programming and makes it slightly more visual - the whole issue of "A little box representing an if-case is still an if-case, despite its graphical representation." that Chainsawkitten mentioned. As someone who is fairly fluent in programming myself, these tools just make the process more awkward with addressing much of the fundamental problems of this approach to software creation.
Though it is interesting, Michael, that even this small change from a linguistic to an iconic representation of programming logic is enough to make a big difference in accessibility for you.
I'm curious to see how
LittleBigPlanet 2 delivers on its promises of something along these lines. Not getting my hopes up, but I'll read the reviews when it comes out.

As someone who can approach the issue from both the artist and the programmer side of things, I feel as though maybe I have a particular obligation to contribute to a solution to this problem. I know my artist side would really appreciate that!

This is a really interesting topic since I'm currently trying to design a kind of programming environment that works exactly the way I would like it to work.
Cool! I'm curious to hear more about it.

Can you share any details about it here?