It's not clear to me that skipping the editor/language setup a problem. For a beginning programmer, setting up the language/editor/whatnot is a huge barrier to

It's not clear to me that skipping the editor/language setup a problem. For a beginning programmer, setting up the language/editor/whatnot is a huge barrier to getting started. If you're not dead set on learning, you may give up before you reach the fun and interesting parts. I think there may be significant value in bypassing that barrier, teaching people to code, and then later returning to the problem of how to actually get your code running. Of course, right now, sites like Codecademy never address this issue. I agree with you that that's a problem for getting people to transition into building something new.