I also think the raspberry pi 400 is your best bet right now. It has that feeling of being an 80’s computer, but it boots to a modern graphical desktop with lot

I also think the raspberry pi 400 is your best bet right now. It has that feeling of being an 80’s computer, but it boots to a modern graphical desktop with lots of open source educational software that they can do explore freely. If you want your kids to dip their toe into the field of programming, show them around scratch for 10 minutes and let them explore on their own. Set them up with a scratch account and they can work on their projects on any computer with web access. My 10yo started with scratch a few years ago and is now starting to learn javascript. The real challenge to getting them into this stuff is the lack of boredom. Kids have so many options to keep themselves entertained nowadays that they tend to not be bored long enough to start tinkering.