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I'll always remember that moment on RPG maker (probably around 9 years old) where suddenly I've understood Variables (I was experienced with HTML and so-on prior), a whole world was unlocked, VB6 programs became possible, everything "clicked" suddenly. I feel once you understand the fundamentals on how it works, it's easy to progress very fast as a child/teenager afterward.

With my kid I want to ensure that fundamentals of computing are understood as early as possible, this is what allows you to understand how the world is interconnected.

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I similarly remember struggling with understanding what "classes" were in PHP as a kid and why on earth they'd ever be useful for, seems like needless abstractions, but finally it clicked, and a whole world opened up, suddenly I could understand much more of Zend Engine than before, and software engineering became a thing I started caring about. Of course, later I was enlightened again so now I avoid classes.

[anthk]

Classes where undertood under Inform6 (a literal OOP language compiling against ZMachine, for text adventures -even more, as Tetris, Madbomber...) with two lines.

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I also remember the infamous "OOP" PHP war :)

[theragra]

I remember how I started to make a simple text based game, and conditionals (in Pascal) were not enough. Ive asked my father, and he explained that the thing I want is possible with loops. At this moment, I was given all the tools that allow writing any kind of program.