I do not want to be defeatist or replace your friend, but here I go:
I have asked myself before how to get into game programming without having had much contact to programming before. Would one really learn to program with a script language alone ? Aren't scripts just patches of code taken out of context, and aren't there already enough tutorials about scripting game engines ? Would people ever get above the level of retyping what some else is typing before them, without knowing the context ?
I would argue that, if people come to game engine as newbies, they have little to no idea on what to imagine when they read about concepts as types of light, pbs material, shaders, shadow maps. If school is long ago even linear algebra must be learned anew. Not talking about concepts of the engine like the scene tree and inheritance, of which one maybe and arguably should have a basic grasp to make better use of the power. An up-to-date documentation, with more code examples, would probably and again arguably be better for newcomers to get behind engine's the concepts before going into scripting these concepts.
I was thinking of a different approach, maybe closer to what @Megalomaniak said, to start building a small render framework, with something as simple as C or basic C++ as in "C with classes", with a trivial flat shader pipeline, basic linear algebra (just touch it briefly, then switch to something like glm and let the eager try on their own), basic rigid body physics, and bring these together so people get the overview, and learn to value what an engine offers.
I am not a programmer, just found to this a few years ago, so I may be totally wrong. But for me it was a real eye opener, after helplessly clicking around in a game engine, to do my own naive renderer, getting somewhere with the help of tutorials and books. I think I can now make much better use of what an engine has to offer.
And one thing, I must say, as sorry as I am: there is no game programming without at least basic math like linear algebra. If it goes deeper, into simulation, force integration and such, then a basic understanding of calculus is needed as well only to use the right tools for the job, when you want to make more than a platformer or arcade game or an fps shooter.
Now skin me.
