Hey community, I’ve got a friend about to graduate high school. He has had a bit of an uneven path in life, and I would like to help inspire him to focus on something in tech/programming/etc.

He is a smart kid, but doesn’t have a lot of good examples in his life. I think he believes his options are to just get a job at a restaurant or store.

I helped him build his first pc a few months ago. I tried to convince him to install Linux, but he was concerned it might be too complex for a computer he wanted to game on or do music editing. I didn’t push too hard. I know he has been doing a lot of modded games and stuff lately. And he seemed open to testing out Linux on old laptop.

He is smart and I would like to encourage him to either look into pc building or programming. But neither is my field, so I want to know what are good on ramps into programming and open source. What are Blogs, youtubes, or even should I recommend an associate degree at the local community colleges? (I would recommend full college degrees but I think he has some family situation which might make that hard).

All my knowledge feels like osmosis in the last year of being on Lemmy and now I have a Linux server with 20+ self hosted docker apps… but I realize I’m just hacking things together, not developing anything. I just want to show him there is another path he could pursue other than retail.