Excellent summary. The "oh wow this feels different" aspect of MicroBlocks comes after you try it. It makes programming microcontrollers as interactive and hands-on as building electrical circuits from discrete components. Your changes are immediate. And the live data graphing from sensors feels like a graphic voltmeter or oscilloscope. For physical computing it's simply the best learning tool I've ever encountered (note I'm an EE major, not CS). All those "real" programming languages now fall short in my view. I'm hooked.