It's not! I am a Technical Director at a game studio and have been in the industry for over 20 years. Firstly, it's interesting that you distinguish between 'freelance programmers' and hiring 'real programmers'. Those two things should not necessarily be different and it sounds like you're simply not hiring the right freelance developers. Secondly, saying you only need 'a few scripts written' tells me that you might be underestimating the size and scope of your project. Even simple games built on modern engines like Unity usually require a good deal of code to and programmer experience to produce a worthwhile result.

1) Create a detailed game design document.
2) Build a prototype demonstrating the core loop and most important features of the game.
3) Hand those over to or hire a professional team of developers, or even build it yourself using a modern engine. For something like a demo, Unity, Unreal, and Godot are all good options for non-programmers to take their games to a shippable quality at a low cost.