I am not sure what I think.
I see kids programming for FIRST Robotics competition in non-simplified language, and programming in drag/drop Lego programming.
I see kids who just want to slap something together quick and make a motor jump around, quickly losing interest because its not texting or graphics on a computer to poke & click.
I see the kids here in the forum putting in the effort to learn somewhat simplified C. The Arduino IDE C seems like fancier BASIC to me, but I've been exposed to a lot over the years.
I think interpretive programming could fit in there somewhere.