When I was 9 my dad did two things I'll never thank him enough for:

1. Buy me a laptop and install Ubuntu on it, instead of Windows, so my first OS was Linux. And I'm talking about 11-years-ago Linux for a 9yo kid.

2. Drill into me the importance of English. For non-English speakers, I believe this is the one true barrier of entry. All docs, forums, videos, etc. are English-first, and by the time they get translated into other languages it's no longer cutting-edge, so if you can't read English you are stuck with the "old" technologies.

Thanks, dad!