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Stay simple and buy her a POSIX-compliant C programming book. She'll have a server running in no time. :)
Then K&R just because everyone should read it.
Grab C in a Nutshell, Understanding and Using C Pointers and C A Reference Manual for reference.
Then get the Linux Programming Interface book.
Okay maybe a bit overkill for a 12 year old...
12 year olds should be outside playing, not coding.
As for the technical side: Make's Getting Started with Raspberry Pi book is one of the best introductions to computing I've ever seen. It starts at the beginning, uses simple language, goes deep and provides hands-on experience. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1457186128/ref=oh_aui_sear...
Get her that book and a Raspberry Pi, a nice case, encourage her, support her, help her connect with like-minded peers and then stand back. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ME5XUAG/ref=oh_aui_sear...
If she has little to no experience with coding, check out this as a start: http://code.org/
See the 'advanced' section of this handout for more coding resources for older kids: http://bit.ly/ortonacode
On the hardware side, there are projects to make programmable jewelry, clothing, and other wearables, in addition to the traditional robots, cars, drones, etc. See the Adafruit site, for example: https://www.adafruit.com/category/65
I have a 12 year old son. He's been interested in the raspberry pi and we have a PocketCHIP coming in the mail: https://getchip.com/pages/pocketchip Install RetroPIE on a Raspberry Pi for a videogame emulator: https://retropie.org.uk/ Last year we did some code.org and scratch stuff and learntomod used blocks coding to learn minecraft modding.
What I would NOT recommend is starting straight up with traditional coding that is not designed with beginners and kids in mind. Don't throw python, java, C, etc. at them. Let them follow their interests: games, wearables, etc., and learn coding in pursuit of that interest, not force them to learn coding for coding's sake. I myself was interested in creating a webform 20 years ago for my student club, and in the process learned Perl for CGI scripts. It was only years later that I learned how sucky Perl was and what a bad choice it is for beginners ;)
Ask the kid and see what her interests really are? Does she want to learn how to make games or what? She should be able to voice this at 12. Can she look up free programming books with Google? There's tons of them. Does she want to mess with a R-PI? If a co-ed camp was a disaster (at the age of 12!) simply because it was co-ed, she might need therapy, not just some hippy-dippy girls-only camp.
The best thing you can do is be available and provide access to knowledge, don't funnel her into particular frameworks, languages, whatever. If she wants to learn ASM, let her. If she wants js, let her. If she wants to learn Photoshop, let her.
Parents are not supposed to direct play. They give kids toys and the kids find their own way.
There is a newer version you can buy on Amazon.
Give her a linux install disk and maybe a few pointers on how to use it as well as a copy of K&R C. I was about her age when I started!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From experience hello world is actually a terrible first thing to show someone in a scripting language since it is pretty much a dead end. Seeing "Hello world!" is not really that rewarding when compared with something like a = 3 + 2 print a
Maybe if it's the only thing you show someone but most tutorials will start with hello world! and then progress to variables, string interpolation, expressions through a sequence of: 1. Try changing the statement print your name. 2. Having to type the same thing over and over is unnecessary, we can save it in a variable. 3. You can use variables inside the print statement through a process called string interpolation…