You are evaluating this as a tool that is intended to train people up to being professional software developers.
It's not!
It's instead intended to give every child in the world, regardless of inclination, some first-hand experience in programming computers. Some of these may go on to become professional software engineers, and if they do it will be time enough to become proficient in the common lexicon. Even if they don't, at least they've gotten a better understanding of these machines that inescapably pervade our lives. And kids that wouldn't have thought they'd have an interest in programming get an easy-entry exposure and may decide to pursue it professionally after all.
Given that that's the audience, the goal is to take away any barrier to the essential skill to learn, which in this case is writing instructions for an unthinking machine.
Kids that already know they love programming and are/were willing to do whatever it takes to learn it (i.e., probably nearly everyone on this forum, including myself), are not the audience! Those kids will make it one way or another. Hedy is for all the other kids out there.
I've always thought that one of the better things we could do is to make programming not specialized; e.g. Excel-as-a-programming-language has arguably done more to bring programming to the masses than any other "real" language, and perhaps THAT's the goal.
I'm sorry, but you are building on a false premise. If you goal is to lure children unmotivated to learn programming you'd better be distributing sweets. Or (if you ask a Far Eastern, or Eastern European mom) threaten those brats with punishments. Replacing "for" for "voor" is not even a barrier removal as much as you seem to believe. Because "for" in programming has a separate meaning, and you'll spent the same amount of time explaining how it works whether it "for", or "voor". Except that programming-for can be useful for farther studies, and programming-voor is much less so. I answered here in a longer comment if you are interested:
It's not!
It's instead intended to give every child in the world, regardless of inclination, some first-hand experience in programming computers. Some of these may go on to become professional software engineers, and if they do it will be time enough to become proficient in the common lexicon. Even if they don't, at least they've gotten a better understanding of these machines that inescapably pervade our lives. And kids that wouldn't have thought they'd have an interest in programming get an easy-entry exposure and may decide to pursue it professionally after all.
Given that that's the audience, the goal is to take away any barrier to the essential skill to learn, which in this case is writing instructions for an unthinking machine.
Kids that already know they love programming and are/were willing to do whatever it takes to learn it (i.e., probably nearly everyone on this forum, including myself), are not the audience! Those kids will make it one way or another. Hedy is for all the other kids out there.