For direction of learning, I'd recommend finding challenging projects with them which they have a strong interest in, and can feel a sense of ownership over, th

For direction of learning, I'd recommend finding challenging projects with them which they have a strong interest in, and can feel a sense of ownership over, then let their curiosity and creativity drive the teaching. The teaching should reward them by solving problems they are perceptive of and value. I think for a language, Javascript is a great choice. It's convenient because it can be used in the browser, or CLI / server with Node. It has powerful and user-friendly tools for debugging and profiling. NPM has a wealth of libraries for graphics, robotics, machine learning, and pretty much anything else you might want. For functional programming, with interoperability with Javascript, there's Elm: https://elm-lang.org/ https://elm-lang.org/