Ferretygubbins wrote

I know this is OT but I rather suspect
that some of you will be able to help.

Boy1 (13) is interested in learning how to write code and so I would
like to set him up with a toolkit for his PC (Windows) unfortunately
my programming days are somewhat in the past and restricted to
MUMPS which was archaic even back then. Has anyone any
suggestions for a suitable platform? As ever the cheaper the better.

Really depends on what you see him doing code wise.

You can do quite a bit in VBA in Office but that isnt going
to be of any interest to him if say he wants to write games
etc and many kids do want to do stuff like that.

With kids its mostly about what they find interesting to code
that determines what they are likely to find useful code wise.

He might be interested in doing apps for android phones if he has one.