[sAuronas]

I will add to his anecdote with my own. I have been teaching my nieces (10 and 16) how to program and I approached it the same way. My 16 y/o niece was told Python was the way to go, but I resisted teaching her that. I'm an iOS developer that learned the 3 bears of web, JS/Ruby/Python, when I started teaching myself. While there were many things to appreciate about all three, the most useful to me was ability to open up a website and see its contents. To build 'hello world' in three smalls files and load into a browser without the internet (kind of a big deal when your niece loses the internet - and electricity - from time to time. Cause: poverty) is eye-opening at that age.

Showing someone you are passionate about something and teaching that - passion... THAT is the best thing you can do for a young mind. The worst outcome is that they are not interested long-term but harness what they learned from you into something else. The best outcome is that they love it and eclipse you at some point earlier in their own careers.

I'm not a parent either, but even if my nieces choose other fields (odds are they will), they will be better off for having some technical training before doing so: they will dig far deeper than what's required because they were trained to think that way. One of my nieces is an artist. She could draw better than I could as an adult at 12 and I had formal training in industrial design! Showing her that code is just a lower level of artistic expression is something I wish someone would have told me at her age. Doesn't matter to me if she goes into ID, UX, SD, or CG. I don't believe you can have too much directed exposure.