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my problem with programming

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Edvard:
Mouser's advice stands true; when you finally pick a language to learn based on your needs and preferences, just start with the basics and learn as you go, step by step, and don't try and code something over your ability lest you suffer premature frustration.  Write down your grandiose schemas to try later, definitely, but don't try to climb a mountain when you're still in slippers.  Don't worry though, if you're truly willing to learn, it'll come faster than you think.  :Thmbsup:

MilesAhead:
Get yourself a good book for beginners and let it hold your hand a bit and walk you through some manageable assignments without overwhelming you.
-mouser (March 17, 2015, 01:45 AM)
--- End quote ---

Along that line it may be a good idea to start with a language designed for children.  Usually the basic idea is brought home explicitly.  Elementary Basic I found in a bargain bin.  It made it clear why one would write a program, explained the solution to each problem in pseudo-code, then provided the source.  Unfortunately I guess it was never ported to anything other than GW Basic.  That came with most every Dos PC in those days.

But I would think a teaching language for children would be the way to go.  I have no idea which one though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_educational_programming_languages#Children

TaoPhoenix:
Get yourself a good book for beginners and let it hold your hand a bit and walk you through some manageable assignments without overwhelming you.
-mouser (March 17, 2015, 01:45 AM)
--- End quote ---

Along that line it may be a good idea to start with a language designed for children.  Usually the basic idea is brought home explicitly.  Elementary Basic I found in a bargain bin.  It made it clear why one would write a program, explained the solution to each problem in pseudo-code, then provided the source.  Unfortunately I guess it was never ported to anything other than GW Basic.  That came with most every Dos PC in those days.

But I would think a teaching language for children would be the way to go.  I have no idea which one though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_educational_programming_languages#Children

-MilesAhead (March 17, 2015, 06:00 AM)
--- End quote ---

I'm gonna chime in here with a couple of caveats of Basic.

What you want to do matters tremendously vs your desire to program. Layman me considers Basic to be something like a third cousin to the legendary Fortran scientific language. Crunching basic arithmetic equations/inequalities and simple logic is "easy". It's just when you expand your sights that it gets hard!

The knowledge base required in your mind to program effectively really is pretty hard. So you could do well to see if you can narrow down the types of things you want to tend to do and maybe "specialize". So after you have the ten lines etc mentioned above to get a program going, you may discover you really want to deal with processing incoming data sets, maybe from files, and so you're not so concerned about gorgeous User Interfaces. So maybe your UI evolves into something like French taught by an Australian (I had a teacher like that once!), but if it works for *you*, that's "good enough for now".

Then later if you want to make it useful for the world, you can enlist help saying, "hey, some/most of my features are here, but can you help me clean it up?"

Shades:
Perhaps UML could be considered a solution here in this case.

Renegade:
Try getting an O'Reilley "Pocket" book. I find that's about the best way to get up to speed on something quickly and easily. They cut out all the BS fluff and distil everything down nicely.

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