Totally fine to paint in broad strokes, and I would probably lean towards that perspective myself. However there are some games that show off the programming more than others, at least in motion. Movement based games, like technical platformers or similar, have a lot of expression through the systems that govern them. Whether or not a game feels good is fairly easy to figure out after spending some time with it, but understanding what would make it feel better and how to achieve it is a much harder skillset to develop. Obviously non-programmers can work out in high level terms what might improve game feel, but I think you can get much better results when you have deep understanding of how things work, what's possible, and what side effects may fall out of a given change.
That said, some of the most fun mechanics are born out of happy accidents involving interactions that weren't fully considered so it's definitely not a constant
That said, some of the most fun mechanics are born out of happy accidents involving interactions that weren't fully considered so it's definitely not a constant