Funny story. Way back when the pride and joy of my young life was an 8088 running DOS 3.2. My friend, who loved computers decided that I needed to upgrade to 3.3. So he takes over the computer for hours trying to upgrade the thing. By the time he was done, it was busted. Had to re-install the old version and had lost everything that I had on the computer. That included one of my favorite old computer games: Autoduel, licensed from Steve Jackson himself. So...DOS 3.3 is not held in high regard by me.

As others have said, if a 14 year old kid is forced to do anything they will hate it. However, I think it would be fairly easy to test the waters to see if the kid might develop a genuine interest in programming.

I may be too old, but I think the father can test the waters with his kid in a similar fashion to how I was introduced to programming: simple programs in simple programming languages. In school I was walked through "Hello, world" in BASIC and found it interesting. There's something there in the quick feedback between coding and running the code that will either trip something in the kid's mind where he is interested in this or he isn't. I say start with BASIC, Pascal, or Java, something relatively easy. Start with simple, pre-done programs that offer a quick reward for the beginning programmer. If it sticks to the point where the kid starts reading and experimenting on his own, then great. If not, hopefully the father will be open enough to explore other possible interests with his child.

I would be worried that the father would try and throw the kid into the deep-end of the pool right away, in which case the kid is going to develop an aversion to programming. Start simple with some basic flow-charting and some basic programs. Maybe get some electronics kits to see if hardware appeals more than software.

One note. As the youngest of three sons, I programmed on my own and in conjunction with a few friends. Generally speaking, until the news media starting hyping programming as a great career opportunity none of our parents seemed particularly interested in what we were doing so long as our grades were decent and we weren't getting in to trouble. Whether its programming, playing basketball, or anything else, so long as the father takes the time to participate in the activity with his child and encourage the child to pursue his interests (other than pro-gamer), I think good will come of it.

The idea of throwing computers at the many problems of developing nations has long seemed ludicrous to me. However, I did volunteer for a time with the WiderNet Project at the University of Iowa. Part of the Widernet Project is to send rehabilitated (yet quite old) computer equipment to Africa. Yet the major component of the project is to seek out copyright permission from publishers of websites and, afterward, to copy those websites onto what are called "eGranaries". In essence, they want to send the internet sans bandwidth requirements to schools and universities in the developing world. What charities need to understand is that computers by themselves are worthless, they require a data infrastructure to be worth something.