I agree with this. I also think that the REPL of Lisp, Ruby's irb, and Python's IDLE are very valuable for the new programmer. I knew a few languages when I hit graduate school, but I ended up doing most of my "programming" in Matlab because of the interactive shell. When I first picked up Python and later Ruby and Lisp, I was delighted by the interactivity. The instant feedback, even when it's negative, just feels more forgiving than compiler errors, and the whole process of trying things out at a prompt feels more like learning than code/compile/run.
