Comment Re:Mods (Score 2, Informative) 704
Wish I had mod points (har har, no pun intended), because this is the way to go.
Get him into a FPS that has an active mod community (TF2 would be my pick, but it's far from the only option). Even just making maps for these games is a start.. scripting game events with entities in Quake/Source based games requires a lot of if/else logic and it's a very roundabout way to get someone thinking like a programmer. From there, they'll probably want to make new guns. This will naturally lead into making mods, which require "real" programming.
Other games that might work is Civ 4, WoW, or X3. All three have great support for mods via a scripting interface.