What is a good place to start for a complete newbie to learn computer programming?

[charles_soler]

I'm interested in learning computer programming, but I see so many different languages and documents with different starting points it's a little overwhelming and I don't know if these documents are outdated. I plan on majoring in computer programming in school but I would like to get a jump start. I also would like to somehow get into reverse code engineering... If anyone can help and point the way i'd appreciate it.
I'm interested in designing applications for now.

 

[A guy with too much time]

if you dont know anything about coding, dont bother with reverse engineering, that will come with time, experience and patience.

as for what language to learn, that depends on what you want to do with it.

web design i'd recommend asp and or php, they're both good skills to have. along with those two comes the requirement of knowing how to work with databases and their respective languages.

if you're interested in designing applications, then anything from the visual studio world is a good starting place as they have a ton of tutorials all over the net and everything is well documented (though id recommend starting with visual basic as its a nice way to introduce yourself to basic programming concepts).

one thing i highly recommend: OOP => learn it, live it, love it.

a good site to seek programming help is either here (though the results are sporadic as the topics can range from anything) or from http://stackoverflow.com, which is entirely dedicated to helping solve coding issues and you'll usually get an answer within minutes, sometimes seconds.

hope this helps though asking which langauge you should learn is asking for a whole lot of different opinions but it really just depends on what your own preference is.

 

[Mark aka jack573]

You could start with Java, it has extra protection for begginner mistakes then c or c++.

Download the Java Development Kit (JDK) from here:
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/?intcmp=1281

You can download a tutorial from here:
https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_Developer-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=tutorial-2009_05_27-oth-JPR@CDS-CDS_Developer

Start at "Getting Started" in the tutorial.

I would not get an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) like NetBeans just yet. This way, you do not have to learn how to use NetBeans, or another IDE, at the same time as learning the programming language.

Some people are having trouble setting up the path and classpath in order to use Java. Here are some pages that help you with the path and classpath.

Path:
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/JavaPaths.html
For XP/2000/ME
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/JavaPaths.html#XP

Classpath:
http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~arnoldyl/NetBeansTutorials/Setting-Classpath.html
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/windows/classpath.html

Learn about reverse engineering after you learn programming, or else you will not be able to understand what you have reversed engineered