Exactly! Great for the kids - my 9 year old son loves it. Even though he's got all the hardware here as well, he much prefers giggling away sitting in front of the computer, so much easier entry point!
100%. Doing a bunch of work in Syntorial is a huge shortcut to "getting it". And once you've done that, a synth is a synth is a synth. Like driving a car, becomes more, "oh yeah, this oscillator is a bit weird/interesting", rather than "wtf does this shit do"
It blows my mind how only after a few sessions you'll be able to reverse engineer patches by ear.
Syntorial is the #1 resource to learn how synthesis works.