Hardware will always still connect with certain child or interested hobbyist. There is a reason, people open up electronics... at age 5. For quite a few it is not for the virtualised code running that brings joy it's the black box of whatever. And we should encourage this behavior.

Edit: I write this with several generations of pi. sitting idle on a shelf. The most interesting project I used one for was Halloween automation of off the shelf decorations. Made up for the stagnant pi's sitting around and all the neighborhood agrees.