I mostly agree with everything you say. I think it's sad that so many in our industry use such poor tools. Racket, for example, is an excellent tool for beginners. The PLT group that produces it has long had a focus on introductory programming and has produced resources such as HtDP (http://htdp.org/) and Bootstrap (http://www.bootstrapworld.org/) yet Racket is far more capable than Node, Ruby, and the like.