CODE!! Get your fingers typing, and experiment creating different programs. There are tons of examples online, go find some and try to figure out how they work. One of the best ways to learn is by reading other people's code. This is probably why every other resource on the web is purely examples! Make some games, make some useful programs, whatever just practice until you feel comfortable and then keep coding.

So now you're a programmer! Congratulations, that isn't as easy as everyone would like you to think it is. If you're interested in making some really great programs, you're going to want to learn some real programming languages. Some people recommend starting with something like Pascal or Turbo Pascal (my favorite beginner's language), or try out Java, Perl or whatever. Eventually you're going to want to learn C. Period. Most everything is either written or has components written in C; it's a horrible, wonderfully powerful language. So don't just sit there, go to a bookstore and nab a programming book or two. You also may want to try and install Linux so that a) you have a stable enivironment to program in (Windows doesn't cut it) and b) you can get free compilers allowing you to program in c, perl, etc. without paying more money. Good luck with all you do, you've already done a lot!

Copyright 1998 by Chris Palmer
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