I guess I'm not clear on the difference. In my mind, programming is telling the computer to do what I want it to do. Whether that's a system administration task, data munging, web application, or whatever.

I myself make that distinction - I guess its because I am and consider myself a sysadmin and not a programmer, although yes I do program, its not my primary function - maybe once I can get my head around that, I can move on - not necessarily professionally, but functionally.