Remember that the purpose of games is to communicate with the player, just as the purpose of a novel is to communicate with the reader. Novels do this through language, games do this through direction, design and assets, not the code. I think the analogy to typesetting is correct - writing the code that runs the game is a far lower level activity than writing the game itself.
>If someone doesn’t even know how to write a game loop, they are going to move on to game design?
If they do, it's only because a company doesn't want to hire outside of house. But one doesn't need to know how to write a game loop to know how to design a game, any more than one needs to know how to design a game in order to write a game loop. They're completely separate disciplines.
>It’s insane, design is a holistic process that requires a lot of exposure.
Not necessarily to programming. It can be useful, and sometimes with small studios or a single developer, it's unavoidable (but good design in those cases is usually the exception rather than the rule.)
