On review, I think I probably took too aggressive of a stance against the concept. If you look at my other comments in the thread, I made a lot of references to the fake "ladder of math", and I thought I detected a similar attitude in "teaching kids to code without using real code". I just don't think there's any benefit in the pedagogical method of "teaching by pruning away the actual realities of the subject", and I think that believing that method is useful leads to more dire consequences down the line.

I mean, if you want to teach a kid piano, you can just start teaching them piano once their fingers are nimble enough to act independently of each other. It's not particularly important to give them a "starter piano" with four keys, and it's more satisfying to bang away on the real one anyway.