Scoble hurting Visual Studio's marketing

In reply to article written by James Robertson accusing him of hurting Visual Studio's marketing Scoble writes;

I'm learning to program. Not learning to use Visual Studio. I wanna know how to branch my code. How to properly call objects. Send around strings. How to write algorithms.

I entirely agree with this statement. In actual fact (fundamentals of programming aside) I'd go so far as saying that everyone should learn the fundamentals of the dotNet Framework and how to manually do the mundane things such compile and link their applications before getting too familiar with the short cuts Visual Studio.net offers.

Visual Studio.net does increase productivity by enumerating the object model, and automating those mundane things (I wouldn't want to go back to manually compiling and linking etc!) but this can lead to a incomplete picture on how everything fits together. By going back to basics you get to fill in those spaces giving you a greater insight to the shortcuts visual studio offers you. Then if anything unexpected should go wrong you are better able to deal with it.

If we're talking about hurting dotNet's marketing then surely badly written programs are higher up the list then one man saying he wants to learn the fundamentals of programming by using note pad!! Visual Stuido.net is an excellent product but when learning to program in dotNet I personally think we shouldn't run before we can walk!