I don't think there has been enough time to say if any "great programmers" (ugh, that's a horrible horrible term) have learned from graphical tools. MIT's Scratch came out (just) 15 years ago, and was quite primitive. Many career developers really start programming at around age 10, so even if they started on scratch, they would be just 25 now. Only beginning their journey to becoming "great". There just hasn't been enough time to say if this is an effective introductory tool or not.
Another fan of that gem. I really wish I could get my hands on a port or emulation.
Spent hours upon hours with that game. The advanced logic required in the harder levels wasn't trivial.
One thing that I remember is that with longer circuits you had to factor in propogation and lag times which basically forced you to refactor down to simpler solutions.
To me the game felt more real or organic than any modern equivalents, although I haven't tried them all.
I don't think there has been enough time to say if any "great programmers" (ugh, that's a horrible horrible term) have learned from graphical tools. MIT's Scratch came out (just) 15 years ago, and was quite primitive. Many career developers really start programming at around age 10, so even if they started on scratch, they would be just 25 now. Only beginning their journey to becoming "great". There just hasn't been enough time to say if this is an effective introductory tool or not.