What should an aspiring "programmer" learn?

Hi, and I hate to sound like to "right tosser" but if you have to start at word processing and HTML, then I have to say you are a a LOOONNGG way from learning programing.

Programming is a number of processes that start with beaking down a complex task into smaller managebel peices, identifing the correct technology to make the pieces work and then putting the pieces together to achiev the desired outcome..

Nothing really to do with wordprocessing, html etc etc.

If you really want to learn programming, then start with some of the easy languages to work with, such as Visual Basic etc.
They come with a nice user interface that helps you through the debugging process, plus there a 1000 and 1 books at any half decent book shop on how to get started with VB.

Then, if you want to move onto web programming, then its time to go to PHP then JavaScript and so on..

Just my 2c worth and I hope something here helps

Take care

Bruce

First, you really need to learn the fundamentals of programming. Things like loops, functions, recursion, objects, arrays etc. Find a good programming book or set of tutorials, and work through those things first. It's not very exciting, but the principals you learn can be applied to just about every programming language.

The key is to get the correct mindset to solve problems.

After that, try out some of the Visual Studio Express products. They're free and quite powerful, but also simple to learn. Do something simple for your first few programs, like a calculator, and then move onto other things.

Programming takes time to learn, and the field is constantly changing and evolving. There are a lot of programming languages out there, and new ones pop up all the time. What you need to learn depends on what you want to do. If you just want to program for fun, the choices will be very different from if you want to make professional websites or develop games.

It's probably best to specialise in one language to start with, and broaden your knowledge once you get comfortable.

Hope that helps.

First of all, HTML is not programming. If you're interested in programming for the web, however, HTML (and CSS) are inseparable from web-development. Some people call HTML and CSS programming, but that is totally incorrect. They are markup and display languages.

If you are really interested in programming, one of the best things you can do is take a general programming course. The language you study is not important, as long as it contains all of the standard language constructs (as excellently pointed out by Sodaware above). Understanding language constructs are the key to becoming really proficient in the language of your choice.

To take things a step further, your should consider your goals; in other words, what can you accomplish by becoming a good programmer? People like me never studied this in school, but I am a natural because I started teaching myself when I was 13-14 years old. For you it is different. You need to understand now where you are going, and separate it from your assumptions about what programming is. Programming today is highly modularized. This is a fancy way of saying everyone on a team has a very specific job to do, but may be good at many things. You need to eventually understand where you fit in, what type of programmer you are, and to start understanding that, you should have some type of goal, of what you'd like to accomplish, so that you can begin to understand this.

Let's take web development, for example. Web development, for the dynamic web (as opposed to static), is a three-tiered process:

1. The design and initial layout - sometimes with some HTML markup (not programming).
2. The front-end development - this is all coding, but not all programming. The programming part happens in the browser, usually in the realm of JavaScript. HTML and CSS are a big part of this stage of development.
3. Back-end development - this is the engineering stage, the guts of the machine. In other words, almost all programming. These people are usually very good at database design also, which is essential to the modern dynamic web.

Usually good developers cross over into multiple categories of development, but we all tend to be really good at one or the other. I'm more of #2, but I do a lot of #3 also.

There you have it. That is a brief overview of web development today. It takes a while to get to the stage where you can call yourself a programmer, or even be ready to get a job, but anyone with a modicum of intelligence and diligence can achieve it if they have the time and capacity to learn the right set of skills.

you have learn the basic before you go to the other languages... if you know the syntax and the logic then you can hooked it up

Let's approach this in a slightly different way:

What do you want to be able to do?

If you're looking to create basic, static web pages, you might need knowledge of:
HTML
CSS
Javascript
Image formats
SEO
Accessibility
Usability

For a full blown content managed system, you might want to learn:
PHP
MySQL
Server Setup
Security

In other words, there's more than just programming languages to learn. You need to learn the basics, then the programming language(s), techniques, software, and finally the more advanced considerations - ensuring scripts are secure, optimised etc.

Others will no doubt say that security considerations are key and should be learnt to begin with - but I find from experience the best way to learn something is just to get on with it. Create a web page, it'll look rubbish the first time. Keep trying, read articles on the internet, improve at what you do, set yourself another challenge - and with each challenge you'll learn something new.