One way is to discuss different avenues of software engineering (i.e. web, mobile applications, code that makes things display on screens vs code running in the

One way is to discuss different avenues of software engineering (i.e. web, mobile applications, code that makes things display on screens vs code running in the background that makes things more efficient vs code that helps you predict stock prices, etc.) and see if any of the topics you mention lights him up one way or another? An alternative way could be to ask him what he likes? When I taught my boss' son, I started off by understanding what interests him - turns out he loved hockey and plays it. So then I went into talking about hockey video games vs hockey statistics.