I'm in the process of self teaching myself to program (I'm a civil engineering student). I discovered one of pg's articles somehow and gradually worked my way through them and began to think that I should probably learn to program myself. I have ideas for things that I presume could be solved though programming but without learning to program it is impossible to know what is possible, this is the hardest gap to cross.
I bought Zelle's Python book, started JavaScript with Code Academy, got Graham's ANSI Common Lisp out the library and tried Rails for Zombies but none really got me interested enough to stick at it.
Dan Nguyen's Bastards Book of Ruby however has been the most successful. It's pretty much straight in, actively encourages copying and pasting code early on, with the immediate prospect of making real programs which interact with the wider world (HTML scraping) instead of feeling isolated on your own computer. I could immediately how HTML scraping could be useful for someone and how the first short programs might be extended.
There are some excellent motivating articles as well which were really key in sucking me in. He also calls his type of programming 'data programming' which to me, a non-programmer who hasn't had the chance to be brainwashed by programming theories, is the most obvious name in the world - all these problems I think could be solved with programming are just manipulating data.
btw: I don't find the prospect learning to program games motivating at all; there seems to be so little you can learn from most of them and a dangerous waste of time.
I bought Zelle's Python book, started JavaScript with Code Academy, got Graham's ANSI Common Lisp out the library and tried Rails for Zombies but none really got me interested enough to stick at it.
Dan Nguyen's Bastards Book of Ruby however has been the most successful. It's pretty much straight in, actively encourages copying and pasting code early on, with the immediate prospect of making real programs which interact with the wider world (HTML scraping) instead of feeling isolated on your own computer. I could immediately how HTML scraping could be useful for someone and how the first short programs might be extended.
There are some excellent motivating articles as well which were really key in sucking me in. He also calls his type of programming 'data programming' which to me, a non-programmer who hasn't had the chance to be brainwashed by programming theories, is the most obvious name in the world - all these problems I think could be solved with programming are just manipulating data.
btw: I don't find the prospect learning to program games motivating at all; there seems to be so little you can learn from most of them and a dangerous waste of time.