Another way to handle 1.) is to let people modify the work of a master and build on their sholders to do fun stuff. I'd already "learned" a few languages (commodore basic, c, pre 98c++, and x86asm) well enough to do toy problems, but when my folks bought me quake I found it had a compiler and all the game logic in quakeC. I played the game a good bit but quickly it became about creating weird modifications, odd weapons shoggoths as pets etc. That exposed me to idiomatic code written by professionals, John Carmack presumably among them, while letting me skip everything between toy program or interrupt handler and using a game engine.

Code spells, a game on steam has some of that benefit, but nothing I jave seen since has been quite as accessible as quakeC