Today, while visiting SF with his family, he finally asked me for help to get started. He even told me that he wants to become the best computer geek in his class (I love that it's becoming cool to be a nerd, and wish it was like that when I was in third grade :)). Being 8 years old he's of course very interested in mobile apps and games, but I don't have much experience with either kids or building mobile apps/games. Still, I want to give him the best advice possible so I figured I'd ask you guys:
* How do you start coding and building apps when you're 8 years old?
* Are there tutorials/getting started guides that are particularly suitable for kids?
* Anything else he or his parents should know?
Ideally he'd be able to build something cool relatively quickly without understanding everything. He can always dive into the details when he know how things tie together at a high level, but it's probably important that the learning process is rewarding and fun all thew ay. At least that worked for me and now I get off over low-level stuff and algorithms on a daily basis.
I'm hoping for help and recommendations particularly from people who have (or just understand) kids, or have otherwise guided a young aspiring hacker onto the path of true awesomeness. Any advice is welcome though as I'm somehwat limited to vague talks about XCode, Swift and showing him what mobile OSs really look like (i.e. Android mascots at Google).