I don't know how old OP is, but I'm 20 and first computing experience was graphical - with Windows NT 4.0. My elementary school had Macintosh OS 7/8 (don't remember exactly). However all I can remember doing on these computers were playing games - AOL Kids, Math Blaster, JumpStart and Zoombinis.

I didn't start programming until I was 13 (out of my own curiosity) and I wasn't offered any sort of programming classes by my junior year in high school.

My point is I think for most of us who grew up in the era of graphical interfaces, computers have always been glorified xboxes. When GUIs were introduced and we had options like Math Blaster I don't think many of us actually considered that we could write our own games. In elementary school I think the bar may be a little too high (not to say it can't be done). That said, it didn't matter to us that the machines were directly programmable. We didn't have the resources to create our own MathBlaster and I don't think any of us would have patience to wrestle with gcc.

I think Codify is a much better tool for teaching programming than a plain text file would be. Its a lot easier to make a "cool app" from a app that hides all hard parts of making a game (like a graphics library) than to try and convince a kid he should mess around in the console.