My children were vaguely interested in programming but one thing they got of it was that learning functions in Python helped them enormously with formal functions in math.

This is one of the things I regret with how math is taught in France: it stresses way too much the formal part and this is terrifying for children (and teens and everyone except mathematicians).

We have a religious reverence to maths in France. It is better now but used to be simply ridiculous. Unfortunately it still means that some more advanced topics such as derivatives are introduced through definitions (the chapter starts with "be a function f(x) with x in the domain of real numbers, a derivative is a function such that f'(x) = lim h→0 ...").

My son came to me with a WTF? I told him about average velocity transitioning to instant velocity by reducing dt, or about acceleration - and finished by showing that a derivative is a function factory (a function gets in, a completely different, unrelated function goes out). He was then ready for the definition.

Same with physics which is tainted by chemistry, with terminally boring topics introduced first. No wonder that we have less and less STEM students.