I've started programming in school and what not but never really took it seriously. I want to start somewhere and I’m not too sure where. I need advice where should I start? I was thinking simple bash scripts then maybe perl, and then after struggling with that for a while trying to convert to c. But I don’t know. Any links to tutorials or anything would be helpful. I have a couple of O’Reilly books.

My advice to you is to start anywhere really..

Bash scripts, C, perl, C++

anywhere...but find something you want to do...and do it.
The only way to learn is to code code code.

So i would be a good idea to learn to be a "script kiddy" first?

Well I wouldn't go THAT far...someone might just hurt you for that pun

There are many posts on this site and sites around the internet that address this question. It all depends on what you want to do with your programming skills, and how far you have already progressed. A good bet would be a goal of knowing either Perl or Python and C or C++. Here is what languages I learned (in order) :

BASIC, scripting, Python, Java, C

Please search this forum, or else google a search on what languages/tutorials/books would be best for you.

any good links for me to start?

Scripts are probably easier to start with since you don't need to compile them. The most difficult thing about just "wanting to program" is thinking of somethign you want to acheive by writing a program.

FYI a 'script kiddie' is refering to an idiot wannabee 'h4XX0r' who simply uses a premade tool to lever a prefound exploit, basically requiring no 'm4d ski11z' and being very lame. Que ''

I was in the same boat a month ago, a BASIC class coupla years ago, but no speakable programming skills. I assumed i knew nothing and picked up an O'Reily C++ book. I just go through page by page programming in as much as possible. Then I switched distros, so I shelved it for a week, but things are moving along again.

http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html

Learn python first. It'll make you a better programmer for doing so.

Respect the whitespace

Better start programming from python or java, but if you like system side programming, go for C/C++, but the learning curve is more and you will not become productive soon.

You can also learn shell scripting and/or perl, as they are very good.

I hear ya!

I started learning python a few days ago and I really like it, it's my first language besides some simple shell scripts.

The IDLE interpreter helps a great deal and you can run programs without having to compile them which is good, I'm guessing you can't do that in C or ++.

If you choose to learn Python there are some really great tutorials on the Python homepage and on the pygtk kit for creating GUI's.
The thing I find most usefull is to read the tutorial a bit, choose one of the exercises to complete then try and add features that are beyond your current capability, then read and research more to find out, then move on to another thing. Wanting to learn to add a new cool feature to a little program is much more fun than simply trawling through a tutorial doing exercises that require you to simply look back a page and copy out some stuff.


I just wrote a program that will print your name, convert your date of birth, 31/07 format, into 31st of July format with correct st, rd, nd and it can handle exceptions too. It tells you when how old you will be on your next birthday too, MAN I'M 1337!!!

I can't wait to have the ability to do something usefull!

I found this link around the fourms:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO.html
Does anyone else know any others?

http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/index.html
http://leapster.org/linoleum/
A couple of good programming resources I have found lately. The linoleum web site has an article about good programming style written by Linus Torvalds.