I want to teach my 13 year old programming. He has the mind for it as he is very logical like his dad. Is Python a good choice? Or is there something else that would be better?

1

Invent With Python

Https://inventwithpython.com is where I have all my books. "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" goes into the source code of some basic text-based games with explanations, and at the end touches on 2D graphical games with Pygame. I then have a Pygame book to follow up with that. I'm also almost done with my next book, "The Big Book of Small Python Projects", which has 81 short and simple Python games, simulations, and art programs. The idea is like those old source code listings in Byte magazine: you just copy the code by hand and then try modifying it (each project has suggestions). It'll be free on my site around June.

#Education #Kids Education #Programming 140 social mentions

2

Thonny

I really like https://thonny.org as a beginning environment, you install it an can start programming python straight away.

#Text Editors #Python IDE #IDE 108 social mentions

3

CodeCombat

#Education #Kids Education #Online Learning 72 social mentions

4

Scratch

If you really want to ease him into it, there's a tool called Scratch that might be worth checking out. It replaces handwritten syntax with drag and drop commands so it's somewhat limited in what you can build (I don't think he'll be able to build a game mod) but it's a great way for beginners, especially kids, to learn about variables, operators, flow control, etc in a way that's a little less intimidating than traditional programming.

#Kids Education #Programming #Coding 558 social mentions

5

Jupyter

Python is a good choice as it is easy to learn and there is a lot of free resources online. I can highly recommend free courses on: https://www.freecodecamp.org/ And https://jupyter.org/ for coding.

#Data Science And Machine Learning #Data Science Tools #Data Science Notebooks 205 social mentions

6

Code.org

First of all, never teach him that he has a "mind for it", second, he can start out with scratch or google blockly, provides GUI for code, it doesn't get into the difficult syntax but teaches the essence of programming to kids, see code.org.

#Online Learning #Kids Education #Online Education 385 social mentions

7

Micro Python

#Developer Tools #Education #Software Engineering 78 social mentions