Scratch is more programming than HTML/CSS by far. It has control structures, functions, etc. Aside from the most obvious projects (games), we've used the Kinect

Scratch is more programming than HTML/CSS by far. It has control structures, functions, etc. Aside from the most obvious projects (games), we've used the Kinect for input and directly interfaced with hardware. We've solved a ton of Euler Project problems in scratch and created physics simulations. I'd be hard pressed to find something you can't do in scratch with enough creativity. For kids, the biggest limiting factor is typing speed. With most languages, as soon as they can think faster than they can type, you hit a second roadblock of frustration where they are thinking too far ahead of what they're doing. Scratch really just abstracts boilerplate for things like showing a sprite and moving it into draggable blocks. The transition from Scratch to Python has historically been pretty easy since most of the kids understand the abstract concepts really well after 1-4 years of Scratch.