I've been developing software professionally for a long time. Mostly server, SaaS, web stuff in the healthcare space. My half-sister is 14 years old, extremely computer literate, and an avid gamer (WoW, and some other MMORPG stuff that I'm not familiar with).
She's recently come to an understanding about where games come from, and wants to learn to program. Of course, she's interested in game development. The Intro-to-Programming, and AP Computer Science classes at her high school have been cancelled.. and I'm struggling to find the best path for her. Like a lot of kids her age, she doesn't always stick to things she gets interested in, and I'd really like to set her up with the best possible chance of having an encouraging experience.
She wants to take a class that's structured and scheduled, since she's already struggled with some self-paced online tutorials, etc. I think an ideal setup for her would be a curriculum that's targeted to people her age, and uses exercises that get her building programs that do something more fun than multiplying matrices.
She lives in the San Diego area, in case that's helpful.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
Not being from San Diego, all I can do is point to possibly better self-paced online tutorials. I'd recommend http://inventwithpython.com/chapters/ first. If she can get through that, she can graduate to using http://www.pygame.org
Otherwise, there's http://www.codecademy.com/ and http://primerlabs.com/codehero