This may be a little advanced for a 9 year old - I'm not sure, I don't know that age range or your nephew enough to really say. Sounds like he is pretty "with it", after all... but I think pretty highly of Human Resource Machine. It's presented as a series of logic puzzles with a drag-and-drop interface for putting together components. It approximates programming in an unstructured programming paradigm (like Assembly). You start with just two commands available and work your way up to 11.
The puzzles are small in scope, so they stay fun to solve, and it's a great introduction to the sort of precise, formalized problem-solving mindset you develop when learning to code without getting too stuffy.
This may be a little advanced for a 9 year old - I'm not sure, I don't know that age range or your nephew enough to really say. Sounds like he is pretty "with it", after all... but I think pretty highly of Human Resource Machine. It's presented as a series of logic puzzles with a drag-and-drop interface for putting together components. It approximates programming in an unstructured programming paradigm (like Assembly). You start with just two commands available and work your way up to 11.
The puzzles are small in scope, so they stay fun to solve, and it's a great introduction to the sort of precise, formalized problem-solving mindset you develop when learning to code without getting too stuffy.
This game is so much fun even for adults