What book to give to a younger brother who wants to become a programmer?

Question

Books

Good afternoon, dear experts!
Alexey is writing to you from the city of Yekaterinburg).
I myself am a web programmer in a cellular company, stack: C#, ASP.NET, JS, JQuery, AJAX, T-SQL, etc.
I have a younger brother, he turned 14 this year, we live in different cities, it just so happened.
I need to get him something for his birthday.
Actually, last time, I gave him a good travel backpack and asked a friend to take his brother to the tourism section, but, this was not successful, since brother likes to sit at the computer more, the evolution was: Minecraft, WarFace, Counter Strike 1.6, now it's like CS GO, it does something in the console, writes its own configurations, writes demos, has its own YouTube channel about games, after I once asked him to make a sign for me (I just wanted to see if it would captivate him or not), he kind of got interested in programming.
I told him that if he has problems with mathematics at school, then in order to become a good programmer, you still need to pull it up, since a good programmer is good at mathematics, to which he said that he still wants to become a programmer.
So, the question is: I want to give him a book on programming, probably more on Front-End (since the results of the work are more noticeable visually in it). But it should be a book that captivates, not frightens with too much complexity, that it talks about the good and bad sides of working as a programmer, so that there is practice at a fairly good level. But it should not be purely theoretical or simply empty from the point of view of usefulness for practice. I was thinking about the Head First series by O'Reilly, I ask for your advice guys, how to lure the little one?
(I apologize for the long preface, I just wanted to draw a minimal portrait of my brother so that it would be more clear which examples of books to give)

Answer 1

Give him a link to https://codecombat.com/ - my brother was interested and it became clear to him how certain objects are connected in games and how
it all works in general ) game examples are a very good option for a beginner.

Answer 2

head first is a good place to start. True, there is a risk that the book will be perceived as the other extreme - "it is written as for morons." there is another risk in your description - a gamer who wants to become a programmer often cherishes the dream of making his own game, and when he finds out that computer graphics is not "pull up mathematics", but pure mathematical analysis and higher mathematics - disappointment can overtake and the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bbecoming a programmer will fly away into pipe.

Answer 3

Charles Petzold. The code. (if you find it in a paper version)
It is with this book that you need to start, and not with HTML / JS / PHP.

Answer 4

Only Kernighan and Ritchie, only hardcore!
In any case, I started with this at school and I really liked it.

Answer 5

Give a drawing book.
You see, you won't spend 100% of your time in codes, but you want to do something else - to play off non-programming energy, so to speak. It is here that a person who has been hammered from childhood with only keyboard science will face an indescribable feeling of rejection from a seemingly beloved business.
Tourism has not stopped, a homebody, then you can draw at your leisure, turning away from the monitor. And drawing will be more fun when you know how to draw.

Answer 6

The Art of Computer Programming, Donald E. Knuth.

Answer 7

Guys!
Many thanks to everyone for the answers, as a result I bought a book on Python, which was advised here, looked inside - it seems to be of interest (at least I became interested), let's see how it goes.

Answer 8

The guy changes gravity in cs :)
I think he should read about HTML first, here , people in the reviews say that the book is understandable and easy to understand. Actually, the author is Vlad Merzhevich, the creator of htmlbook, I think the book is just a kind of paper version of the site, I hope with pictures.

Answer 9

If you are interested in games and programming, then give some book on C # for beginners and show your brother what Unity3d is.

Answer 10

It's probably really best to start with Python or HTML5/JavaScript basics and game development...

Answer 11

Given the age, you can pick up a book from the "entertaining programming" series, the same age with a similar start.

Answer 12

They will probably throw stones, but maybe actionscript 3? Here you and the web have a little and then the simplest animation, and in 5-10 minutes you can draw something and make it move using the keyboard, and it’s quite easy to cook up the simplest game. The syntax is very similar to C/C++, which may help in the future. Here you also have a nice OOP through classes, moreover, most likely it will go on itself, as the code exceeds 500 lines, and given the mediocre performance, it will make you think about optimization

Answer 13

Perhaps not the topic, but maybe he will be interested in something related to
lego robotics electronics, maybe an arduino set, raspberry pi
maybe there are monthly introductory programming courses, usually universities also have courses