Fun fact: there’s a group that shares this goal but was actually capable of doing it: https://www.scratch.mit.edu/

(TL;DR you can just let people explore coding in a simple language/engine and that’s enough of a stepping stone)

https://xkcd.com/1251/ (there is always an xkcd about it)

FYI this comic is by https://stupidtwink.thecomicseries.com/. (also the creator of such internet sensations as “The weed that makes you gay” https://stupidtwink.thecomicseries.com/comics/173/)

Is there any reason to use a root account? If you had used sudo for each privilege needing command in stead it would have stopped you.