Well, describing oneself as a working programmer (as opposed to a computer scientist) is a valid position, but why does it invalidate the "programming language as tool" metaphor?

A basic message of CS is that most general-purpose programming languages are to a large extent isomorphic in their expressive power, and that many computing problems can be solved efficiently in the mathematical language of sets, matrices, or abstract nodes sending each other abstract messages. The translation to a real language is then the easier step (though it still can be time-consuming and error-prone, for sure).

If only we all worked this way - there would be fewer language wars, and less terrible code resulting from "thinking in the language" rather than "thinking about the problem".