And what's the most useful language to start with?

not really sure what you mean by 'online'. sure, you can read references and write programs on your computer at your own pace--or even do online courses.

theres not really such thing as a single source (unless maybe 'the internet' as a whole). what i mean by this is that even if you go study this, or any other topic, you will have to seek another reference, at one time or another, opposed to an instructor or single text book.

also one cant really say whats the most useful programming language, which is a pretty heated topic. every programming language is made for a purpose (of course), and each one has its ups and downs. there are websites that collect data from surveys to give an idea of how popular/used one is, though.

to recommend a language to start with, there are some factors, such as: your current knowledge of 'programming'/design/abstraction, the level of knowledge your seeking to learn, etc. for example, if you want to just start making pretty programs, an open source 'Visual Basic'-like language may be suggested. if you want to start off from the very ground up, you could try assembler language. a few levels up from assembly would be C, i think. if you want to start programming with OOP, i would recommend C++ or Java.

of course my opinion is biased towards the languages i know, and is personal preference. there are easily hundreds, if not thousands, of languages, so my scope is very limited.

1. Yes
2. you'll get everybody recommending their own fave, just like linux distros



But, more seriously, if you are on Linux, you'll need to understand at least one shell, usually bash:
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

Good Linux tutorial:
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/

Comparison MS to Linux:
http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

My Personal recommendations:
vi/vim editor: avail by default on just about every Unix/Linux/BSD etc:
http://www.vim.org/

Langs:
Perl for speed/ease of development and almost as quick as C:
http://perldoc.perl.org/

C for really understanding what's going on in a computer and extra speed of programs:
http://gcc.gnu.org/

Databases: you'll need SQL, but learn the ver that comes with the Db you use eg:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/

All of these will come as std on your distro (if you tick/ask for development tools)

Just dive in and ask when you get stuck:
http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

HTH

Good luck

Yeah, choose a language you'd like to start with first (it REALLY doesn't matter that much ). I'll suggest Python (or Ruby or VB work too), since you can start with a structured approach, then learn object orientated programming (OOP) later, all in the same language. They'll all also let you program some pretty nifty programs fairly quickly. Now search for some beginners tutorials in whatever language you chose. You'll probably go through a few of these. You'll find other stuff to read while you're doing this.

As nadroj said though, there is no one, most useful language. The ones I suggested are just my personal suggestion. On another day I may even have suggested something else, like C. Point is, the language doesn't matter so much.

My first program was eight lines long, took me six months to write and had a bug in it.

The way that I learned was simple: I wrote stuff. Sub-war, space-war, all those very-fun games you write for a 24x80 video terminal that only had upper-case characters and no backspace.

I've gotten somewhat better at it since then, of course, but "the way to learn how to do it is to do it."

And here's why: the hard part of programming is not the syntax of a particular language or tool! It's how to think procedurally. For example, what's the bug in this program?
(It's all com-in' back to me now-w-w-w-w...)

What's the bug?

Answer: a parked car.

(In revision 2.0 the robot crossed the road and got smooshed: there was a parked-car within 35 feet, which was ignored, so the robot stepped right out into traffic...)

(In revision 3.0 the robot was destroyed by a two-way street.)

(In revision 4.0 the robot failed when placed at an intersection, because it considered both directions and therefore hung.)

(In revision 5.0 an error was found in the "cross the street" algorithm at that intersection, as the robot attempted to cross diagonally.)

(In revision 6.0 the entire Windows-based system was replaced by Linux, which has worked flawlessly ever since. The robot now simply rides in an elegant rickshaw pulled by four intelligent penguins.)

Another good source of just about everything for you:

[urlhttp://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/[/url]

The have tutorials, guides, IDEs, links to compilers, links to hosting, etc. Just about everything you could need to get onto your feet.