Gregory's Server@darius I think another important consideration is would the tool scratch an itch for the learner and get them interested? Spreadsheets are great for some things, but if the learner is interested in making game-ish things I think Scratch is a great place to start. Building on "Logo", a lot of work was done to make the system intuitive and easy to learn, avoid syntax errors entirely, and be approachable for kids.
@Eliot_L Yes that's totally fair! Basically replace "import useful data and output results in a useful format" with "do something that the programmer finds really helpful/interesting"