Why not check out the K&R C book and work through that? It's still an amazingly self-contained book that manages to be a language tutorial (and almost a referen

Why not check out the K&R C book and work through that? It's still an amazingly self-contained book that manages to be a language tutorial (and almost a reference), while still being approachable without programming experience. C compilers are easy to get hold of, and for better or worse the language will certainly still be around in a decade or five. Ironically, it might even give him a stronger foundation in programming than the average "learn Python in a day" web course.