I wouldn't worry about limiting language syntax just for him to be "able to branch out to other languages years down the line if he wants to." As far as I reme

I wouldn't worry about limiting language syntax just for him to be "able to branch out to other languages years down the line if he wants to." As far as I remember, my first brush with programming might be when I was ~7, on an old, crt-connected computer (not comodore, something Yamaha branded, with arabic OS I found at my grandpa's), with the Basic programming language. As far as I remember, I was able to comprehend PRINT, INPUT, IF and GOTO, I don't think I was able to handle sub-routines and loops. Your mileage may wary :) I really started \w programming 10y old, with after-school course in Visual Basic for Applications. It was the year 2000 and that was only ide our teacher was sure we would have at home :-) I remember, that sub-routines were fine for me by that time, loops and array iteration as well, interestingly, I took some time I comprehended, that I can do i.e "x = x + 1". This wasn't something that my brain thought was possible, based on my experience in math class (we have been solving simple linear equations by that time). So, functional language might have been easier in this regard :-) Unfortunately, I don't remember when I managed to grok recursion? We made a lot of text adventure games \w input and message boxes first, and later on drag-n-drop some forms together. Two years later we worked with C. Three years later in Java. In that time my accomplishments were at the level of single level top-down shooter and we might have accidentally invented the clicker genre :-) So, if he wants to try ruby, wouldn't worry about somewhat tainting him. If you think it would be fun to learn elixir, and want to take your son along, and write a game together or something like that, that sounds like fun as well. Hope my account helps, I would like to hear how did your effort go :-) I have a three year old daughter, and one day I will want to share programming with her as well :-)