What sort of problem could you challenge a newbie with to entice them into learning to programming? It would need to have a simple enough solution to be possible to do with just the basic but painful enough for the newbie really desire the automation. It's easy to come up with something that would appeal to technical or mathematic minded, but much harder to for a child or alpha type.
The solution to that is "download some sorting and filtering software". You can force them to write their own, but it'll be like selling aspirins for the pain caused by your blow to their head; unless you're their school teacher -and even if you are- they may just end up resenting you.
