I am interested in learning some programming languages, and have read posts detailing python is the best place to start or BASIC. But before I continue a few ponderings of mine (forgive me if they seem somewhat juvenile and precocious)i am still confused to the "purpose" of programming,and reasons to do it, both good and bad/illegal (apart from making a program or game)and some of the programmes one can create with the main programming languages and their relative advantages to ones life or computer experience. Why is Unix and Linux such respected operating systems amongst the programming/hacking community, yet windows so popular and what are shell accounts. And also what is the difference between the languages, as in surely they are all similar, and do the same thing, because how does a computer know the difference between C++ or say V basic. I would like details of all the languages and their functions. I know this may seem somewhat intense but once i get this cleared up I will feel much more prepared to dedicate time to pursuing programing..thanku very much for your time.

Computers dont know the difference thats why you need a compiler or interpreter to get the computer to understand.

These are good questions, so I will create answers to them in the hprog wiki at http://www.hprog.org/ and post links to them here when they are ready.

Simply put: a compiler/interpreter translates the human readable code (C++/visual basic source code) into a computer readable code.

Most of your questions were already answered in the past,
See http://www.hprog.org/fhp/
(Resources)

OK, I hope I have addressed all of your questions at:
http://www.hprog.org/fhp/ProgrammingFaq

If anything is left unanswered, then please follow the EditText link on that page and add another question. Someone will see your change and add the answer. I hope to see you soon in our IRC channel, #hprog on freenode. You can get information at http://www.hprog.org/fhp/IrcChannel , or use the IRC applet on the TPU site.