[wikwocket]

Absolutely. "Programming" with cute icons may not make you a "great" programmer, but that's not the goal. It's to get you interested in the idea of telling a computer to do cool things.

As an example, my daughter had no real interest in doing anything with a computer until we showed her she could move Moana's raft around with some Scratch/Blockly code in a Disney Hour of Code game. Therefore, I think these games are absolutely worthwhile. Let kids start learning the "hard parts" of programming after we've got them hooked!