[carrbomb6872]

Originally Posted by RadarBob

Your best bet is to look into your local community college. You need a coherent curriculum to teach you the right stuff in the right order. And having a real person who is a good teacher is invaluable.

You said "career". Having that certificate or degree from an accredited college is by far better than saying in your interview "yeah, everything I need to know I learned from the internet."

This ^^

Originally Posted by DELOCH

If you are new, I think your best bet is Python and Ruby. Simple and clean and introduce you to all concepts without crippling your productivity -- their libraries support anything from simple console interfaces to fullscale 3d graphics editing software.

And this^^ Python is great, very user-friendly, has a great IDE (parsing, as opposed to compiling, is awesome for learning how to write code), and avoids overly convoluted coding methods in order to teach you the basics. In general, OOP (object oriented programming) is an advanced programming concept. Learning is best done at a basic level (procedural, in regards to computer programming), so stick to something simple.

For example, java "hello world" example:

public class HelloWorld {//this file MUST have a name "HelloWorld.java"
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello world!");
}
}

and then, python:

print 'Hello World'

Python contains simple, easy to understand programming concepts that can be built upon with higher-level languages.

Originally Posted by XtremeDeveloper

Java is an awful language to start with, it's inefficient and incomparable to c++ which is superior. If your starting programming you should start with vb.net which will give you programming fundamentals and enable you to create advanced applications quickly (impossible in java and c++) although progressing to a more commercial programming language like c++ is fundamental if you want a job in programming or are planning to write applications which require number crunching and speed like an operating system or a rendering engine. BTW I am also 15.

DEFINITELY not this^^ C++ is great, and so is java, for different reasons. VB.net is... well, not, if you ask me. Visual basic is based on a very old and very incapable language and is slowly but surely being phased out. Sure, programming concepts can be learned from it, but other languages are MUCH better and relate better to other languages than VB (python, for example).

Read 'Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science' by John M. Zelle. GREAT read for anyone interested in getting into programming.