Best way to start Programming?

The easiest way to start is to pick a project you want to make. Teaching yourself how to do something is always easiest if you really want the end product that you'll make - learning how to make it is a byproduct.

So what do you want to make? A game? I'd suggest Unity. An iOS or OSX app? I'd suggest Obj-C. One app that runs on OSX, Windows, and Linux? I'd suggest Java. A dynamic website that does everything client side? I'd suggest JavaScript. I can't tell you the best option for server side programming as I've yet to work on a project like that.

The easiest language to learn is Python, by the way. If you just want to make programs that run in terminal, that's something I'd definitely choose Python for. But it seems rare to me that non-programmers aspire to make a program like that.

 

Yes, this one way to go for sure.

On the other hand, it can be frustrating when you're really engaged in making something, and you don't yet know even the basics of the language.

What I did was buy a Perl book and read the more basic parts of it over and over again for about a month. I took notes to remind myself of key points etc. Once I had a grounding in some basics, I began cooking up projects and getting the creative juices going.

If you want to make dynamic websites, perl and php are the languages you'll most likely be interested in. I use perl mostly because that's what I already know, but php is more popular these days. My coding mentor has largely shifted from perl to php.

You can do some quite useful things with even modest perl or php coding skills. I'm not an expert and never will be, and yet was still able to code my own blog and forum network software etc.

If it's web coding you want to do, check out this guy:

http://willmaster.com

I've been working online for 20 years, and he's the friendliest most helpful guy I've met. He's been publishing a ezine with coding tips every week for over ten years.

Good luck!

 

Historically, the programming languages designed for education, easy enough to be used with the younger children, as well as popular enough to inspire a fair amount of educational literature, were Basic, Logo, Scratch and Squeak. Similarly Scheme for older college-aged types. Today, Alice and some simplified Python environments might also be suitable.

One might be able to find ancient books for kids on Basic and Logo in a used bookstore.

Assembly language, C (plus variants), and Java were absolutely not designed with learning them in mind. More like some authors force fitted them into textbooks, with mixed results. So I recommend against these if you need or are looking for the easiest intro to learning coding.

Ignore the suggestions here to start with Objective C, unless you turn out to be quite talented.