I think BASIC! for android by Paul Laughton is a modern good modern alternative for an entry to programming.  It comes with good documentation and examples, and is a classic basic-type language.
link:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.rfo.basic&amp;hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.rfo.basic&amp;...</a><p>Once a kid might want to move up from that to solve perhaps more practical problems using PCs, I think a combination of bash (including basic usage of rsync, crontab, grep, sed, find, wget, ssh,...) and maybe VBA&#x2F;Libreoffice Basic can take you a long way.  (You can easily make nice little form&#x2F;button based applications by dragging and dropping in the office suites.  Also check out <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;excelunusual.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;excelunusual.com&#x2F;</a> for some inspiration on things you can do in VBA which I would not have thought practical!).