1. Build an application<p>2. Go to 1.<p>I'm not being a dick. That's actually the best way to learn. You can read books (and certainly will while doing number 1) but if you don't actually take the time to sit down and build something, you'll never get a good enough feel for how to program. <p>Once you've iterated that loop a couple of times, you'll realize you've done it all wrong. But that's what learning is all about.
Step 1. Buy whichever 'Learn Python' book you like the look of. Read book, while hacking up little programs to amuse yourself and solve your problems<p>Step 2. Read some tutorials on the net to expand your knowledge. Investigate open source programs like BeautifulSoup. Use open source stuff to build toy programs with (e.g. RSS reader or screenscraper).<p>Step 3. Implement a project of moderate complexity, while reading more advanced books, and browsing Python blogs to get a broader understanding of how things work.<p>I assume this process would work for Ruby or PHP, but I think Python is the perfect language for learners.
Hmm, thats a very difficult question to answer...
I think it depends on what are you trying to create. <p>If it is a webapp I recommend learning JavaScript, for that you will have to learn HTML and CSS before you start writing JavaScript code.<p>What you really have to do is to pick a simple programming language and start coding with it.
For me, the way to learn programming is by creating code, first pick your programming language, then start reading about it, be sure to start with a simple book or tutorial, don't look for advanced books.<p>What I'm saying is:
Read a lot, code a lot, and have fun!<p>Good Luck.
1. Write code
2. Read code<p>You should go with Python, the syntax is really easy and the code it produces is sexy.<p>To get you started right away, figure out what and how this does:<p>for i in range(5):
print i
1. Write code
2. Read code<p>You should go with Python, the syntax is really easy and the code it produces is sexy.<p>To get you started right away, figure out what and how this does:<p>for i in range(5):