One of the most peculiar and yet most important things to consider about “learning programming” is not the obstacle which presents itself to you from the very first moment of unfamiliarity, namely:   “where do all the punctuation marks go, and how do I make the damn thing compile?”   (Believe it or not, it merely takes practice.)   (And beer.)

The true challenge to the beginning student is understanding how the capabilities of the computer, and of this-or-that programming language (oddly, it doesn’t matter so much “which one”), are applied to the solution of a particular problem.   This is why a programmer who might appear to be doing nothing at all, or who might have a penchant for taking long walks as I do, might actually be doing the very hardest work of the entire day.   Here is a machine, which can only do a very few things but which can do those very few things unbelievably fast, and we want to make it do ... this ... or that.   Given that there are no cut-and-dry answers, only a handful of well-worn paths ... how do you not only do it, but do it well?   How, indeed.   (And then one day you start poking around the other neighborhoods, where you stumble upon things like Prolog, or “R,” or Common Lisp, and you realize that there is no ending to this happy obsession of yours.   It’s like really good science-fiction, but in real life.)

At the start, you are going to spend a lot of time wrestling with punctuation and syntax.   You are also going to have to deal with frustration ... as you will, mark my words, continue to have to do forevermore.   (It is the nature of the beast.)   But if you are at all like me, you will continue to find it endlessly challenging and (sometimes) rewarding.   I consider myself very fortunate to have turned what was the fascination of a six-year old kid, fully a decade and a half before the first practical “personal” computer existed, into a career that I still enjoy doing ... never-you-mind how-many years later.

Welcome to the craft.   Please feel welcome, and welcomed, here.