Programming, its status in education, and how its fundamental concepts can be taught to an inexperienced audience are among the oldest debates in the field of computer science education. While there is consensus about programming being a crucial skill to acquire, there is much less consensus about which programming paradigm to use. Popular paradigms include both block-based and text-based programming. We examine whether the choice of paradigm impacts the learners’ conceptual understanding, whether typing proficiency should play a role when selecting the programming paradigm, and whether there are significant differences in task completion time and the number of logical mistakes made. More than 350 children participated in our study and learned to program with turtle graphics in either a text-based or block-based learning environment. We found that both text- and block-based programming improve students’ conceptual understanding significantly. Furthermore, we found block-based programming to simultaneously increase the number of logical mistakes while also significantly reducing the time spent per task. In contrast, typing proficiency plays no significant role in task completion time. The choice of a paradigm for beginners is strongly debated – this work helps to provide new perspectives in this discussion.