Definitely necessary. I remember those days, and the realization that I could run an existing program, or I could sit and make my own, and the latter was pretty appealing to me.

I picked up Human Resource Machine when it came to the Nintendo Switch a few months ago, and I loved it pretty immediately. I think it does a great job of abstracting out the fact that you're writing assembly, masked by their very dark sense of humor (Little Inferno, anyone?). Whenever one of my friends (other grown-ups, not even kids) say things similar to wishing they knew how to program, I suggest they pick the game up and give it a try. It's like jumping in the deep end, but does a good job of showing how to think like a computer would think.