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However, if you are either mathematically minded or somewhat into chain-and-bondage, then Haskell might also be worth looking into. I'd suggest reading Raymond Smullyan's "To Mock a Mockingbird" if you want to go down that road.
It's a popular book about combinatory logic. The kind of logic you need for functional programming.
If you're starting from the very beginning, learn a good text editor. (Editing is such a huge part of programming and has so many other payoffs that it is a very good first step.) Use a forgiving and simple language like Python, and ideally an operating system where the tools you need are already installed. Learn the documentation systems for your language of choice. For instance, in Python, you can go to http://www.…
And not only write code, but also read code.
And debugging is actually a more useful skill than writing new code, and comes in handy far more often. It also tends to be more painful. But where there's mud, there's brass.
Peter Norvig: http://norvig.com/21-days.html
Eric Raymond: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/pfaq.html
The below three essays are absolutely invaluable. Peter Norvig: http://norvig.com/21-days.html Eric Raymond: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/pfaq.html
http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx
In particular, check out CS 106A.
Set up a Linux computer (Ubuntu Linux is the easiest to set up), and spend the summer learning to program in Python. Here are some of the best online Python tutorials, including a link to videos and course material for MIT's introductory computer science course, which uses Python: http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-learn-to-program-in-Python/an... Build something that you want to use so it will be meaningful to you. Do y…
Vim tutorial: http://blog.interlinked.org/tutorials/vim_tutorial.html
Set up a Linux computer (Ubuntu Linux is the easiest to set up), and spend the summer learning to program in Python. Here are some of the best online Python tutorials, including a link to videos and course material for MIT's introductory computer science course, which uses Python: http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-learn-to-program-in-Python/an... Build something that you want to use so it will be meaningful to you. Do y…
Set up a Linux computer (Ubuntu Linux is the easiest to set up), and spend the summer learning to program in Python. Here are some of the best online Python tutorials, including a link to videos and course material for MIT's introductory computer science course, which uses Python: http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-learn-to-program-in-Python/an... Build something that you want to use so it will be meaningful to you. Do y…
I started learning this stuff... my god... 10 years ago.
It took me over a year to figure out that line 1 was the best first step OS (a question I didn't even ask until 4 years in).
It took me four years after that to figure out that line 2 was the best second step (I am on chapter 18 of Mark Lutz's Learning Python, very easy read, the only problem is to not get impatient).
It took 3 years to figure out that line 7 (including line 8) was the best way to go for databases.
10 years ago was the first time I read Greenspun's stuff and decided to march down this path (lines 6 and 10). I still use vim as my primary editor, but I'm learning emacs. Most valuable starter tip on emacs I ever got: you should have hundreds of files open.
That is a great answer.
Set up a Linux computer (Ubuntu Linux is the easiest to set up), and spend the summer learning to program in Python. Here are some of the best online Python tutorials, including a link to videos and course material for MIT's introductory computer science course, which uses Python: http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-learn-to-program-in-Python/an... Build something that you want to use so it will be meaningful to you. Do y…
Change out Emacs for Vim and you'll be a pro in no time. Vim tutorial: http://blog.interlinked.org/tutorials/vim_tutorial.html
/me bias because I'm an Emacs user - but I don't think myself above VIM users...