Wilheimer

I started by learning qbasic, which as DaWei states, is not a very effective tool. It did however, teach me some of the general concepts behind programming. Assembly requires knowledge of these concepts along with knowing the architecture of the target processor you are programming for. Another aspect of assembly is that the programmer must be familiar with different number systems (binary, hex).

Ade

I personally would recomend PHP. Although it's applications are limited I found it a very forgiving language to start with. It taugh me the basics well and I found C++ very easy after that.

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Don't wound what you can't kill

yeohhs

I enjoy coding in Win32 assembly as a hobby. I'm using RosAsm which I find easy to learn and use. See http://www.geocities.com/yeohhs/ for some example with source codes.

Best Regards,
Yeoh
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ReggaetonKing

Jumping from VB to Java, VB taught me a little bit about programming. VB does things about differently than other programming languages ut it did indeed give me a jump start on programming. It's basically what got me into programming. Java is pretty easy in comparison to other languages like C++ and definitly Assembly. Java is a high-level language which, I think, is a good way to start programming but learning the basics of programming will really help someone with no programming experience. Learning to use a usage language with 1,000s of classes provided by the Java API is a good way to get started programming while learning a lot of programming concepts.

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I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!

Ooble

I wouldn't recommend PHP as a starting language - while it's powerful, it doesn't exactly ooze fantastic design.

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Me :: You :: Them

KyrinComaBlack

I would recommand learning C first. I started off learning PHP first than moved to C now im stuck between learning C++ or C#

DaWei

I'm going to (cautiously) recommend Python. Many novice programmers learn to wield a tool without ever learning to solve problems. Honky li'l horn, ringy li'l bell, pushy onna pedal, go like hell. You may (or may not) get to the convenience store, but a successful road-racer it doesn't make. Learning Python, if you stop to wonder 'why' along the way, and get some good documentary material, may induce a problem-solving mindset. The drawback is that it may spoil the learner to the point they forever avoid languages that don't have the underlying support that allows superfluity to be discarded.

If one wants to be a mechanic or an automotive engineer, then one is going to eventually have to go beyond accelerator pedals and get to the nuts and bolts (assembler).

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Abstraction doesn't make it impossible to write bad code; it makes it possible to write superior code.
Contributor's Corner: Grumpy on C++ Exceptions DaWei on Pointers

KyrinComaBlack

Like DaWeI said just basically learn Python. And read everything right if you don't understand something in the docs read over it again. If you still don't understand just come here and ask questions.

There are many programmers that started learning Python or basically just went to a mid-level language. Start at something small and work yourself up.