Programming problem solving ability is one of the basic skills of Software Engineering Vocational High School students. As a prospective programmer or software developer, vocational high school students must be able to understand problems, make plans and implement them in computer programs. However, research that tries to explore the level of problem solving ability in programming, especially for vocational high school students is still few or even non-existent. The purposes of this research are 1) to know how good problem-solving skill of vocational high school students, 2) to explore problems of programming teaching and learning especially in the pandemic era, 3) to analyze which problems influenced student’s programming problem solving skill according to relevant theory. This research is a mix method research with sequential explanatory model. The result of the study showed that programming problem solving ability is low. From 83 respondents, the average problem-solving score was 33.37 out of 100. Based on the data from questionnaires interviews and learning documents we identify some problems occurred in programming class. By analyzing them with relevant theories, we found several problems in programming class which indicated influencing programming problem solving skill. Those are:  lack of motivation and self-confidence, lack of learning resources, low ICT literation, syntax-based programming learning, and the lack of variety of problem solving being provided.