I don't think you need any programming at all, or maybe just a basic one. What you need is to take the source code of the old coin, which is publicly available, and make the necessary changes. Search and replace will be enough to change the details of the old coin to the details of the new one. After that, you have to compile and release the modified client, start mining and that should do it. There are resources online about doing this, you can start here https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/Creating_forks to get some ideas.