Okay, I don't even know what the difference is between all these programming languages are. If someone could help me a little...

Take a look at the Quick Start Guides on the front page and you should see one with a title appropriate for what you're looking for.

If you have some money, a very good way to start would be to buy sams "teach yourself beginning programming in 24 hours" its a pretty good book (so i've heard) and looks at many languages in general and shows what makes up a language (ie control structures, logic, desisions, aritmatic). that sort of thing would be handy for a begginer as it explains the basic concepts of what a language does. After that you could move onto a language like Visual Basic. Its easy on beginners, but can be powerful enough to use databases. That should teach you how to use a language. That would be a good start.

Take up a book on Basic( not Visual Basic ). Try to understand what it says. It should give u a faint idea about programming. Then move on to C and C++. By this time u would have got a good knowledge about programming.

Good Luck

:)

Don't do VB! Ugh. Learning an easy language like Scheme (I would say ML Psion, but NO). Check schemers.org for a number of good resources.

I agree metamorphic, Learn from that book then go onto a major in demand language like C++, Visual Basic, Java etc etc. Going from visual basic to a java programmer can be a big transition. To the contray I started of on C and it did me the world of good but people are different

If you are not after 800 pages of stupid text , and are fairly logical , try The C Programming Language by D.Ritchie and M.Kerningham - its a good 300 page book. C is an easy language , its small , versatile and works well. I dont get the new 'craze' in interpreted languages ... what is so good ?

-Vlad

"C is an easy language "

If you have never programmed in your life, learning C (or C++) will be extreamly hard. it is best (even if you are logical) to get an an exteamly basic language with nothing fancy in. like basic basically (lol sorry). then when you understand all the if, else, elseif, endif, for, while, wend, loop, next, data types ect you will be much better prepared to take on a more powerful language.

"I dont get the new 'craze' in interpreted languages ... what is so good ? "

I think that interpreted lanuages are generally easier becasue newbies dont need to go thru the process of compiling and linking. Using an interpriter means that they can see results straight away, rather than having to write the whole thing first. edit, run, edit, run. Instead of edit, compile, link, run, edit, compile, link, run.

There is no craze in interpreted languages. Just dynamic languages. Perl and Python are byte compiled. Lisp has been compiled for years. They are simple more dynamic and allow for stuff like incremental compilation (at least Lisp does and has for at least 20 years now), annoymous functions (lambda anyone?), etc. Dynamic != interpreted.