I used Scratch ALL THE TIME as a kid. I'd always play other people's projects and I made several of my own. I think in the long run it did help me; it was definitely fostered my interest in coding and game dev. And it probably did help me understand concepts in coding like variables.

I remember browsing Github several months ago and seeing that there was a repo for a Scratch plugin. That really surprised me, I didn't even know it allowed plugins. I'm surprised that there were people willing to make them too! That's awesome!