While some would think this is a horrible thing to say, I would say when teaching programming, the single most important thing is "amount of work required to do something the user feels is interesting". Once they are interested and understand variables, loops, and functions, then teaching them proper habits and "proper languages" is much easier.
The PADI way gets you into the sea ASAP. It's only really safe to do this in benign conditions (e.g. warm, clear, non-tidal water in the Red Sea). But it quickly gets people hooked on what diving has to offer, and you can add in skills for hostile waters (cold, murky, strong currents, deeper, penetrating wrecks and caves, etc) later if and when you need to.
The BSAC way involves spending 6 months to a year in a training pool. You have to really, really want to dive to stick with it. They've stopped it now, but they used to test people by having them e.g. tread water for 3 minutes holding a weight belt above their heads (the A-test) which you will never ever have to actually do as a diver. It's meant to produce divers who can handle fairly hostile conditions on their very first sea dive (tho' IMHO it doesn't).
When learning Python, I looked at it through the lens of someone just getting started with programming. While it's not really possible to do this in a completely unbiased way, that was where my musings came from.
In terms of your thoughts on programming: I find them interesting. I think it's a reasonable perspective. For the audiences I work with, it can be important to hook students early on with the cool stuff or else you might lose them too early. I personally hope we can then get them into what you define as programming, but even if we can't, at least they leave with something.
No, it wasn't--knowing the context actually makes your post quite a bit more thought-provoking. What languages have you programmed in?
The easiest way to list the languages I know is to share this: http://gailcarmichael.com/work/technical
One possible answer is that the term "programming" means something somewhat different to the author than it does to, for example, me. When I look at the Python tutorial topics, even those for non-programmers, I see stuff that looks like programming: loops, conditionals, generators, etc. But the author apparently saw a lot of stuff that didn't seem to have much to do with what she was interested in: getting the computer to do something cool. Processing apparently gave her an easier way to do that.
To me, getting the computer to do something cool, in and of itself, is not necessarily "programming". For example, the beginner's tutorial for Processing that the author links to tells you to type the following into the editor: "ellipse(50, 50, 80, 80);". This, of course, draws an ellipse. Cool! But this, to me, isn't "programming"; it's just invoking a magic incantation to get the computer to draw an ellipse. "Programming" is what the person did who wrote the code that interprets that line you typed and figures out what to draw and where.
It's quite possible that this is just me; maybe most people are OK with using the word "programming" to describe something that doesn't seem like programming to me. But word choice aside, I am not trying to say that only what I call "programming" is worth doing. I think the point is more that maybe "programming" is too narrow a term to describe what many people are trying to do when they want to get the computer to do something cool.