Going back to the point of this thread... If HC shows his kids some basics of how to program, and an end product that actually does something - They will either be interested or they won't be. It can do no harm.
I remember when I loved making stupid qbasic programs which were basically
input "choose A or B" sub1
if sub1 = A then print "you are stupid. You smell!"
if sub1 = B then print "Well done you win! You are the best!"
goto line 100
I would then sit there and get people to press A and laugh at them.
I would always press B - WOOHOO!
to me that was funny. I'm weird. Meanwhile my brother said he was going to make doom
He got 300 errors. He was 8... Wait, he must have been 6. I was 9.
The point is, we loved it. My ambition was to make something that worked and was simple - his was to make something that was good (and at the time it never worked). So that's why he is a programmer now and I'm not - He had more ambition!
I can't see how it is a problem to teach kids to program without there being any end result other than they learnt a bit about logical thought and MAYBE they will utilise it one day with some kind of end product - maybe not. But it beats playing angry birds