Where to get started with programming?

Hey everyone,

I'm interested in learning how to start programming. I'm doing a lot of travelling right now and have a lot of downtime and one of the things I'd like to start doing is learning how to program. Simply put I find it really interesting and think it would be a fun way to kill some time.

I guess my two questions are which language would be the best to learn and where is a good place to start learning. I have no problem paying for online classes or ebook or anything like that either.

Thanks in advance!

First of all, I'm glad to hear that you're taking the leap into programming. Programming is becoming the new keyboarding. There are a lot of programmers on this forum and each and every one codes differently so you will get tons of different responses. Here's mine.

The language you want to learn really depends on where you're going to apply this coding. Do you run money making sites? If so, stick with HTML/CSS, JS, and PHP. Do you do a lot of link building and automation? If so, go with Python or C#. Again, this is all based on my unique perspective.

An easy way to get into coding is by using a site like www.codeacademy.com or www.khanacademy.org
Both sites are a really good way to begin. Once you get the hang of the syntax you can dive into ebooks or online classes.

I'd love to here any feedback from you or any other members! Happy coding!

As mentioned above, it really depends on what you want to do.
You can use a variety of languages, but here are some general recommendations:

For websites:
HTML will be needed for the basic "look and feel" of the website.
CSS is (optional but highly recommended) for the design of the website.
Javascript (also optional but highly recommended).
PHP is needed to make the website "dynamic" and would be the main "powerhouse" of the above languages.
MySQL is used as a database to hold all of the information (username, password, etc).

For Desktop Applications
Python is awesome (and cross-platform)
C# is great (the easiest to automate things with - but limited to Windows)

If you want super fast programs (and don't mind it being super slow to develop), then C and C++ are good languages.
However, I highly doubt you'd need to use those -- unless you're working on video games or drivers that need it.

First this:


then this:

I was exactly like you my friend about 1 month ago. I searched and searched. Some people recommened W3schols. But that's BS. It doesn't let you apply at all. I HIGHLY recommend codeacademy it's the fastest,simplest and BEST way to learn to code. I started off with HTML at it's a joke language to learn and super easy and fun. I would recommend that. I've moved onto CSS and it's just as great! Looking to learn all the languages they have! Have fun! I'm doing it too!
BA,

Thank you all for the great feedback!

Just over a month ago, I decided to learn programming. I asked my friends which language would be most useful in terms of a good career opportunity. Most of them suggested me to learn Python. So I signed up for a course in Programming using Python at Coursera and I completed it just 21 days ago. I highly recommend this course for you.

I've written my entire experience in a blog post -
http://techterrain.blogspot.com/2013/12/my-first-mooc-experience-at-coursera.html

Happy coding!

Udacity, Coursera and Codecademy are good places to start learning programming.

Learning programming is the same as learning a new dialect or language.

There are so many programming languages to choose from but i suggest you begin with the fundamentals of almost all of the programming languages, start with C programming. Learn about Variables, conditional statements, looping statements in C That is the first thing you should understand in coding.