Tl;dr. In my experience trying to teach elementary programming over the decades, the most important skill of the newbie has been their ability to decompose a problem into small discrete steps. And, to do so without skipping steps. What might be obvious to or assumed by a human can be left unstated. To a machine, of course, it’s a logic fail.
Those that can do this can proceed to language niceties. Those who can’t must pause and develop that skill.
Critical Thinking? Have you met any software engineers?