I'm a Systems Reliability and DevOps engineer for Netdata Inc. When not working, I enjoy studying linguistics and history, playing video games, and cooking all kinds of international cuisine.
First things first, figure out why she wants to become a programmer, and make sure her expectations are consistent with reality. It's unfortunately a rather common case that people who want to be programmers and have no experience have very low expectations for how difficult it is to actually be a programmer (this is common in any field, but especially in engineering disciplines, and even more so for programming).
Once you've gotten past that, use that information to figure out where to start. Some particular examples:
If she wants to do web development, point her at HTML/CSS and then at vanilla JS, and only after that at stuff like TS and application frameworks. This kind of staged learning approach helps a lot with understanding how everything actually fits together in a modern web app.
If she wants to do game development, point her at C# and Unity or C++ and Unreal Engine, they're the two most widely used pairs of language and game engine in the world and have both good documentation and good communities surrounding them. Make sure she understands in this case that game development is seriously difficult to the point of being one of the hardest types of software development for most people.
If she's interested more in the back-end stuff that provides the basis for modern network services, Go and Elixir/Erlang are great starting points, they're widely used and very good for this type of thing, as well as being solid starting points for learning to code.
If it's stuff like AI and machine learning, Python is a solid starting point, and C/C++ are a great way to expand on this through things like OpenCV. Eventually, all three provide a solid transition point into things like TensorFlow and CAFFE.
The important thing is to figure out not just what interests her, but also how she wants to apply that interest. Few people want to program for no reason at all, and even if her interest is just in the fact that it's a high-demand career that pays well, that still gives you something to work with.
Beyond that, encourage her to actually code. The old aphorism 'practice makes perfect' applies just as much to coding as to anything else, and it really is the best way for many people to learn to program.
First things first, figure out why she wants to become a programmer, and make sure her expectations are consistent with reality. It's unfortunately a rather common case that people who want to be programmers and have no experience have very low expectations for how difficult it is to actually be a programmer (this is common in any field, but especially in engineering disciplines, and even more so for programming).
Once you've gotten past that, use that information to figure out where to start. Some particular examples:
The important thing is to figure out not just what interests her, but also how she wants to apply that interest. Few people want to program for no reason at all, and even if her interest is just in the fact that it's a high-demand career that pays well, that still gives you something to work with.
Beyond that, encourage her to actually code. The old aphorism 'practice makes perfect' applies just as much to coding as to anything else, and it really is the best way for many people to learn to program.
Point noted! Definitely will ensure she is up for the challenge.
Will also discuss the 'Why?' behind the interest too and that she is up for the grind.
Thank you!