How should I learn programming and what languages should I learn first?

robadob1: How should I learn programming and what languages should I learn first?
I want to learn how to do programming but at the moment I only have a limited knowledge of basic. What programming languages would be best/easiest to learn first and how do you think I should go about learning them?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Ben
For starting, try either learning C++ or Java. Just by searching online you can find many C++ tutorial websites, like
https://www.cplusplus.com

Java is made by Sun, and it has a nice website for many aspects of Java:

Using the Java API can help with learning new methods and such. They also offer tutorials.

Always start with the “Hello World” test (search for that if you do not know what it is). After that, learn about variables. From there, it’s your choice. Many tutorials have step-by-step guides.

Answer by Colanth
You should learn programming before you learn languages. Start with

Then the choice of language depends on what you want to do – web applications, desktop applications, databases? Learn the languages you need for the job. (A ratchet wrench is a good tool, but not for a carpenter.)

Answer by fokionzd
Hi,

I would advise strongly against learning Java or C++ first… they are both object-oriented and as such, you will need to learn both the object-oriented paradigm as well as the language itself. This is especially true of Java. Also, these languages are limited in the sense that they are not very good for web programming, which is a very exciting platform right now.

In my opinion, PHP and JavaScript are quite good as they can be applied using functional or object-oriented programming methods. Once you get some experience, make sure to check out Ruby. It’s an amazingly elegant language, which can also be used for web and general programming.

Answer by Dane V.
C++ is fantastic! It will help you to understand any other programming language mainly because of your brain after C++. I would also look into Python as it’s becoming more and more popular nowadays. Python is supported by Google as it uses the language a lot, for example, YouTube is written in Python. My suggestion is to join some Python forum to learn programming and Python. I know one such forum for beginners over at