people can learn anything up to a certain level if they WANT to do it, and most people need short reward feedback loops like 'do smth' and 5min later 'tadaam! cool result!'. I think the simple fact of 'seeing cool results' is the main value of using drawing when learning people how to program. Kids and people in general are used to GUIs and cool graphics everywhere and text is boooring to them and associated to boooring schoolwork, so graphics seems the only way to give beginners this simple feedback loop (music will probably work, but for a smaller number of people), and the fact that it might pool them towards geometry and later some cool math that can be visually explored through programming seems like a good side effect. Actually I like the idea of using programming as a platform for teaching math and these silly looking programming drawings seem like the best launchpad for something like this.