This is a great place to start:

http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/

It's a easy to read, comprehensive book available for free online.

Amy

I think Visual basic is probably one of the most useful because unfortunately Micro$oft continues to dominate the PC Operating System and Office Productivity Suite market. Understanding VB would let you manipulate various aspects of Micro$oft products, like office for starters.

I totally agree with the bad habits part though.

I personally would suggest starting with C++. If you want to learn it right, like actually studying data structure and flow, go to a community college and take some classes on it. I have met so many "programmers" who write codes from "trial and error" without understanding basic loops.

Like:
draw line
draw line
draw line
draw line
draw line

Is equivalent to:
A "loop" with count =5 and action=draw line

"Gee... I don't need loops to produce the same results..."
::: SMACK ::: :devious:

Thanks for the suggestions guys I am gonna check some of this out.

Visual Basic is a piece of garbage and will teach you every wrong habit you can learn. C++ is overly complex and archaic, and is ridiculously overcomplicated for GUI work.

I would suggest Java. No pointers, very easy GUIs, runs on any platform, almost human-readable code, and a lot of IDEs.

You can also try C#, which is generally Windows-only and models Java, only with more complexity.

I would not suggest learning PHP as your first language, because it easily lets you pick up bad habits. It has seemingly cryptic syntax errors that often don't really help to solve the problem, and you also need to set up other dependencies such as a web server to use it.

Well, if you are serious about learning programming, especially Obejct Oriented Programming, I second the Java suggestion. Because after doing lots with Java over the last year or two, programming in PHP is...well, I wish it were Java.

Mirrors my thoughts 100%.

If you have no background in any programming languages, I would recommend not wasting your time with any specific language that you may never use.

Just start head first with a PHP book for beginners, like "PHP for Beginners". Studying Java first (or C++) can be an overkill, if you have no plans to use them.

Then you can setup a test seerver on your PC to test you PHP scripts and the book examples, or even a vBulletin test server. Next would be an introductory book into SQL, like "SQL Fundamentals", to learn about relational databases, including MySQL.

If you prefer to get some background first, I recommend getting a general book on "Programming Languages".These types of textbooks are ideal in introducing you to the basic concepts of programming languages and techniques, runs through the most popular languages and some historical ones, and explains the differences between them, without committing you to any specific language. These books are an easy read, and show you the differences between modular and object oriented languages, and how they handle/translate algorithms.

Yeah I was gonna say... it seems odd to recommend learning Java to a new programmer who wants to write hacks for vBulletin, given that vBulletin is completely php and javascript...

I'm a total newb myself, and I'm about halfway through Larry Ullman's PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Websites Visual Quickpro Guide. Not only is it written for non-programmers but it's directly relevant to working with vBulletin. I've even managed to make a couple mini-mods here recently with the help of that book and these forums. Obviously I recommend it. :)

My recommendation was qualified by the statement And, I stand by that statement. PHP and HTML are the way to go if all you are ever going to do is tinker with your site and the sites of others. But, if you are looking at becoming a "programmer" who can branch out and do other things, I think Java is the best way to start.

Amy

And that makes sense, but he did say:

So it just seems to me that what he needs to learn to that end is php/javascript. :shrug: