> First of all, "learning to code" is as ambiguous as "learning a [natural] language".

True, so what?

> Second, I am highly skeptical as to the intentions of this movement.

Okay, you are skeptical about intentions. Where's evidence of nefarious intent that would lead a person not relying purely on irrational bias to give your skepticism any particular weight?

> Not when you realize that the big moguls standing behind this are probably more concerned about having typists who can write instructions, rather than skilled programmers and computer scientists.

Granting for the moment that you claim of what they would be "probably more concerned about" is correct -- though I'll note you provide neither evidence nor argument to support this imputed motivation -- so what? Having more people with only basic competence might be a desire, but doing that would also seem likely to open the door for more people to move beyond basic competence, as well.

> The sugar coating, the testimonials from everybody besides actual computer scientists

To the extent these are real things (certainly, its pitched to have mass appeal rather than appeal to people who are already into computing and equally certainly many of the testimonials are from people who are influential with the general public rather than specifically computer scientists) it is understandable given that much of the goal is to draw interest from outside the community of people already deeply interested in computing.

OTOH, its a distortion to claim that their testimonials are "from everybody besides actual computer scientists". While their testimonials are from a broad range of backgrounds, some of them are "actual computer scientists" (for example, Maria Klawe [1] and Peter Denning [2].)

> As the proprietary software giants are standing by this, they are very likely to focus on proprietary platforms

There's a lot of companies "standing by this", some of which are "proprietary software giants" -- and plenty of which aren't. Plenty of open source educational projects are "standing by this", plenty of companies whose business isn't selling proprietary software, too.

> The issue of software freedom, I believe, is more important than bashing instructions

Software freedom is meaningless without the skill to "bash instructions", since its only the freedom to choose who to be dependent on. More people with "instruction bashing" skills means more people for whom software freedom means something more than gratis software.

> How many of these kids will be taught about GNU?

I suspect lots of them will learn about GNU whether or not they are taught about it. I wasn't taught about it -- but, being interested in programming -- largely as a result of being taught in school at a young age, often on proprietary platforms -- I learned about it simply in the course of seeking out more resources and tools for programming.

> Ultimately, this will either drive away children from programming [...] or it will reduce the general quality of labor.

Wow. That's an interesting -- and completely unsupported -- dichotomy.

> I really want to support this. I do.

Sure you do.

> But it really keeps looking like learning to code is just a facade.

You have provided nothing other than statements of your own biases to support the idea that its a "facade".

> Of course, the children will learn something, but the ulterior agenda and how their perception will be skewed is something distressing.

You have provided nothing substantial to support the idea that an "ulterior agenda" exists, or that "perception will be skewed".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Klawe
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_J._Denning