How To Get a Game-Obsessed Teenager Into Coding?

looseBits writes "I have a friend whose 14-year-old son spends all his time gaming, like any normal teenager. However, my friend would like to find a more productive interest for him and asked me how to get him into coding. When I started coding, it was on the Apple II, and one could quickly write code that was almost as interesting as commercially available software. Now, times have changed and it would probably take years of study if starting from scratch to write something anyone would find mildly interesting. Does anyone have experience in getting their children into programming? How did you keep them interested if the only thing they can do after a week is make the computer count to 10 and dump it on the screen?"

Comments

Re:You don't

[elrous0]

I've worked with coders who should never have been coders.

I was in a programming class once and a fellow student asked me how I had solved a particularly difficult programming problem we had been given. I excitedly told him how I had come up with a clever solution that I was particularly proud of and about how I had awoken my roommate jumping up and down with delight when I did it. My fellow student just stared at me blankly, clearing not getting why I had been so excited at coming up with a unique solution to the problem. And that is when I knew that I was meant to be a programmer and he wasn't.

Cube 2: Sauerbraten

[SheeEttin]

Cube 2: Sauerbraten. Give it to him.
It's a free and open-source Quake-like FPS. Usually the progression goes like this: Playing -> Mapping -> Scripting -> Coding. I've seen that progression played out several times in the community and myself (full disclosure: I moderate the forums and Quadropolis.us, the primary source for maps, mods, etc.).
Mapping is done in real time and in-game. A mere tap of the E key will switch between editing and playing, so you can see and test what you're doing immediately.
It's also designed to be light on resources. I use the (very underpowered!) open-source radeon driver to drive my Radeon X1600 Pro, and I can get a consistent 30 FPS with the eyecandy barely dialed back.
For a little more detail, here's the description from cubeengine.com:

Free single and multi player 1st person shooter game with some satisfying fast oldskool gameplay. A large variety of gameplay modes from classic SP to fast 1 on 1 MP and objective based teamplay, with a great variety of original maps to play on.
Level editing has never been so much fun: a press of a key allows you to modify the geometry / textures / entities in-game, on the fly. Even more novel, you can make maps together with others online, in the unique "coop edit" mode (!)
The engine, though designed for simplicity and elegance as opposed to feature & eyecandy checklists, still competes nicely thanks to its novel "6-directional heighfield deformable cube octree" world structure that is the basis for its in-game editing. Occlusion culling, pixel & vertex shaders, very accurate lightmapping, robust custom physics system, network system, models, sound, scripting...