That little program is what got me interested in programming as a kid.
I played games nonstop on my (parents') Apple II, and loved it. But seeing those two lines of code produce "Hello!" over and over on the screen blew my mind.
You see, I thought games were amazing because I could manipulate these little worlds, and I could doing anything imaginable within their rulesets. But, seeing "Hello!" scroll forever and ever made me realize that, with this coding thing, there were no rules. The fact that I could make this computer do whatever I wanted, if only I could speak its language, was irresistible.
So of course, I modified the program to say "Hello sray!" and "Hello <this>" and "Hello <that>" and "Sray's brother smells", and so on and so forth. And then I figured out how to add spaces to each line to make a cool zig-zag effect. And so on and so forth... most of us know how it goes.
Anyway, this little trip down nostalgia lane isn't going to help you get your son interested in coding. But it's interesting how different kids react to the same thing.
It was better back when you could totally freak your teacher out simply by running a simple program like that in class after you finished the assignment before anyone else.
Well, I was allowed to play 3rd party games 1 hour per day max; the rest of the time I was allowed behind my computer but not playing games. So what else to do with that great machine than make games myself? It worked well for me and still does.
There's so much joy inside that "]" prompt but I'm not sure how to get him to see it.