I can't seem to find the reference to it, but there was a link on HN a couple of years ago of a dad who taught kids (9 year olds IIRC) to program a robot by cre

I can't seem to find the reference to it, but there was a link on HN a couple of years ago of a dad who taught kids (9 year olds IIRC) to program a robot by creating a real world obstacle course, giving them a basic set of "commands" that they could put together on post-it notes and a parent or another kid being the "robot" that "ran these instructions". I have used this to introduce my son to the basics - and call it "post-it" programming. We built a few obstacle courses around the house. The most advanced we got was to "unload the dish washer", that resulted in him "inventing" functions. It typically works better when some one else "executes" the program, since bugs are easier to surface and debugging is a lot more fun. That said, my son has since learnt to read and write. There is greater enthusiasm to "type" on a computer than use post-it notes. Hopefully this can be adapted to your friend's circumstance. Best wishes to him.