I think it is because programming is inherently about working with abstractions and visual programming is typically removing abstraction and making details of y

I think it is because programming is inherently about working with abstractions and visual programming is typically removing abstraction and making details of your program visible before you. Part of learning to program is to learn work with abstractions especially if you have never been really exposed to something else similar (mathematics, physics, engineering, etc.) Things go out of sight but you still need to train your brain to manage these things. This is a bit like playing chess. Good experienced player will be able to plan long in advance because his brain has been trained to spot and ignore irrelevant moves efficiently. If you imagine training that would let the player learn recognize good moves but not learn how to efficiently search solution space, you would be training brute force computer that would not be very good player. I think visual programming is a different thing from regular programming. I think compromises like Logo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language) are much better teaching tools. You still program a language with syntax but the syntax is very simplified and the results (but not the program) are given in a graphical form that lets you relatively easily understand and reason about your program.