I would like to learn how to program?

[Storminq]

any tips? I'd rather come to you guys than senseless hours wasted on youtube

[cyanide]

If you can take a class in it, I would. Or get an into programming book. Probably most people here have learned programming through video games. I did. And honestly, although it eventually gets you up to speed, you spend so much time banging your head on your desk I'm surprised I still have any brain cells hanging around. My first working program that actually did something useful was a Lua script for Garry's Mod. It was probably only about ten lines long but it probably took me like 20 hours altogether and was very frustrating. From there I got into writing Secondlife scripts. You have to be quite into it to do it that way. That was back when I played games for like 10 hours per day. Later I took AP Computer Science at school. By that point I already knew enough about programming that it was a breeze. But I was astonished at how quickly the other students who had no programming experience got up to speed. Only then did I realize how powerful a linear curriculum is... Do yourself a favor and buy yourself a book at barnes & noble. A nice fat, linear book kicks the shit out of watching youtube videos and piecing stuff together from various different tutorials.

[Gamelon]

^^ This.

There's something about a professional teaching environment that's more enriching than a bunch of scrubs on YouTube who hardly know how to teach themselves.

[bmlkiddo]

Why would you go to YouTube to learn how to code?
There's plenty of well-made eBooks out there, tutorials made by the developers of many languages, and it's all free and open. Why pay to learn something that you can learn on your own, for free. Knowledge is everywhere, you just need to piece together resources.

[Finalx]

You can try this
Learn Web Design, Web Development, and More | Treehouse

[Tree]

What language, what goal, preferred system, etc. Need to know more than just "I want to program".

[bmlkiddo]

Writing BSD modules for PPC or SPARC in C.

Oh wait.

[Ebisu]

I have to say TreeHouse and TheNewBoston, they were helpful for giving me a kick start on programming.
TheNewBoston - Free Educational Video Tutorials on Computer Programming, Adobe Software, Computer Science and More!
Learn Web Design, Web Development, and More | Treehouse

[xxcookie]

teach yourself from legitimate sources, or take classes, that about the only ways. youtube aint gonna teach you shit. I learned basic java script from a "for dummys" book. and several other E books that i found online

[bmlkiddo]

teach yourself from legitimate sources, or take classes, that about the only ways. youtube aint gonna teach you shit. I learned basic java script from a "for dummys" book. and several other E books that i found online

You can even learn basic Java from Oracle's Online Tutorial as well.

I learned Javascript because I needed to write something to calculate algorithms, while maintaining a browser GUI with minimal dependencies. It's all easy to learn, OP just has to put his mind to it.

[Storminq]

You can even learn basic Java from Oracle's Online Tutorial as well.

I learned Javascript because I needed to write something to calculate algorithms, while maintaining a browser GUI with minimal dependencies. It's all easy to learn, OP just has to put his mind to it.

@ everyone who posted thank you all for your suggestions but I took to books-a-million yesterday and bought"beginning programming with java for dummies" and continuing with the for dummies series because they have multiple ones like c++ and all that good stuff.
Sidebar:thanks for referring me
Another sidebar: i am also planning on taking a class in school for it

[bmlkiddo]

@ everyone who posted thank you all for your suggestions but I took to books-a-million yesterday and bought"beginning programming with java for dummies" and continuing with the for dummies series because they have multiple ones like c++ and all that good stuff.
Sidebar:thanks for referring me
Another sidebar: i am also planning on taking a class in school for it

You should stick with one language and get good at it, and then branch out to others. Once you understand advanced concepts, you'd be surprised how similar some languages are. The concepts can usually be used to understand other languages and concepts. It's good to know multiple but you should definitely focus on one for a bit. :p

What are you going to be using to code? Are you going with a standard text editor or like, NotePad++? I enjoy Notepad++ for Windows because of it's syntax highlighting and simplicity. Or are you using an IDE like Eclipse or NetBeans?

Overall I usually use nano with syntax highlighting though. lol