[poplarstand]

My younger brother is in the same age range. He was interested in programming, so I pointed him towards Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. He has done well since, with his latest project being a simple mouse-wiggler script that sets his status to "online" for his school's mandatory online attendance checks.

Looking back at the learning process, the most useful parts of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python were the mini-projects: web scraping, GUI automation, and other immediately visible tools that helped a student to build tangible things. Once he had those, my little brother could figure out his own projects, like automating redundant tasks in the video games he plays.

Conversely, the least useful part of the book was its fundamentals. In retrospect I should've started him on a different tool like Codecademy. The instantaneous "correct/incorrect" feedback was a better fit for clearing the initial hurdle in understanding syntax.