I am helping a friend learn to program. He was doing "Learn Python The Hard Way" but was loosing steam. I created a project for him to do, a simple ASCII game: https://github.com/antoinehersen/ASCII-Dungeon-of-DOOM. Having a project with visual and interactive elements is far more motivating. Also it push you to learn the real skills needed for programing, not only knowing what a loop is or how to open a file, but figuring what to use when, and how to organize and connect it all. This experience will create a reference frame for everything he might subsequently read in a book.

I strongly believe that accomplishing a small scale project that as some value is the best way to learn.