I definitely agree that spreadsheets (of which Excel is just the latest) have drawn a lot of people into basic programming. But at the same time, it has stunted a lot of people's growth because of its sharp limitations.

Spreadsheets have a lot of similarities to the sort of code bases that as an industry we've been moving away from. E.g., no version control, no tests, opaque code, bugs are hard to find, write-only code, bit rot, random antique scripts used in critical spots, poor reusability, latest version is on somebody's hard drive somewhere, nobody knows which version is the right one.

I also think it's deeply unfortunate that there's no good path from spreadsheet master to real developer. As great as spreadsheets are, they're a cul de sac. I hope this new generation of tools fixes that. If not, somebody sure should.