I partially agree, but I want to clarify that "open up an editor and start typing" is not the sine qua non that it used to be. I would argue that Scratch (for

I partially agree, but I want to clarify that "open up an editor and start typing" is not the sine qua non that it used to be. I would argue that Scratch (for instance) is very much a programming tool, and kids that play with it are learning to program, even though there's no text editor and all the manipulations are block-based. The "check" and "count" cards in this game remind me a lot of the sorts of control flow you build when you're just starting to use Scratch---one control element, one command inside it---and as such I could very much see using this board game as an introduction to be immediately followed up by putting the kids in Scratch. So as I said, I partially agree with you: this board game does not, by itself, teach programming. But, I think it's not anywhere near as distant or as tangential as you claim.