Dont know where to start

[bware1986]

I have no idea about programming. I want to learn but dont know where to begin. Can someone lead me into the right direction on an easy way to start programming. The easiest program to use. I tried to use perl management but just couldnt understand. Dont know if i even downloaded the right thing. Any help would be great. Like i said i am new so anything would be great.

[redhat]

well, the way I started was to learn HTML. There are plenty of places to learn HTML, but the best that I can find is at w3schools.com. After getting html down, then I moved on to javascript which is also covered in the w3schools website. If you can get javascript down, then you should have no problem transitioning in to BASIC or any other derived language. The two are structured differently, but are both easy to understand. The next step I took was to learn C/C++. You should be able to find everything you need at cprogramming.com, but it is also a good idea to do some searching on google. That's how I learned.

[atrius]

In my personal experience, Java is fairly nice, and better for somebody who's never programmed then C and C++ because Java will automattically do memory management. You dont need pointers, you dont need to make or destroy memory locations for variables.
To learn java : Well, you'll need the java language on your computer. For developers. http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp
I think that Eclipse is fairly good, although Notepad2 (http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html) is *extremely* good as a basic text editor (provided your happy compiling yourself).

[dj_kat]

I started with scripting languages such as php and asp vb and javascript. Java is a bit tougher but still doable C++ and C thats a different level you can seriously crash your computer and its def not for the lazy programmer. But no matter how you start you can pick pretty much every language you want the logic behind program is very similar in most modern program languages.

[SatansBrother]

Hmm see a variety of answers personally I go to college and they teach Java first which i think is bad, I would go with either HTML is you want more web based knowledge or Pearl because its a classic and free, Jbasic is nice also. If you run UNIX just start using the terminal and built in compiler its C but since you will eventually end up having to learn unix commands anyway its not a bad option.

Luck.