Yep I agree. I don’t think learning Scratch is a good way to learn programming. The intentions are good but IMHO misguided. Scratch is too “abstracted away” from what is really going on. Learning about the lowest possible abstraction (machine code) made it easy for me to understand everything else in programming. And the humble BASIC programming language taught a whole generation of kids how to program. So I think it is fair to state that BASIC is a proven way to teach kids the “real” stuff. Perhaps Python might be a better choice today?
One of the game changers from back in the day, which makes teaching 'real' programming much easier, is the proliferation of very good interactive online learning environments, like Khan, Udemy, etc.
Scratch is great for learning programming for kids/people who it doesn't come naturally to.
Natural developers like myself and plenty of others spent our childhoods hunched over a zx81/spectrum/commodore/whatever because we thought it was _cool_.
