What are some of the best ways to learn programming?

Read and learn principles

Download a development kit and try it

Make mistakes

Fix them.

There is no magic way – you have to learn by doing.

Download the latest version of Python, which is a great first language that is also widely used. Check out a python book from your local library to get the basics. If you make mistakes in your coding, the computer will give immediate feedback.

It really helps if, in addition to the coding examples and exercises, you write small programs on your own. It does not have to be anything very clever or useful. One thing that is not usually taught is the use of debug statements. You can check the values of certain variables by printing them in your program. If you get stuck, there are plenty of web sites that offer help.

Check out some books from the library because they are free to read. I also asked my librarian about programming classes & she gave me a flyer of a local group of people who get together to help each other learn. This group are people who have gone to school to learn programming & they remember how frustrating it was to try to do it on your own, so they help by giving newbies advice on the best way to find your errors & figure out how to best correct them. This group meets about once a month & the newbies tend to pair up with the more knowledgeable so you get one on one training which most instructors don’t have time to do. They also know most of the free online training sites so you can do most of it yourself with them just filling in the blanks. It takes a lot of work & dedication on your part once you learn the basics!!!

I agree with @LostInParadise. Python is an excellent first language. It hides some of the tricky details from you, so you can focus on writing code that does useful stuff. Eventually you’ll want to learn the tricky details, but it’s important to have success and fun early on to get that positive reinforcement. Too many people get bogged down and quit.

Once you learn the syntax of the language and get through your first hello world type programs then learn basic algorithms. They’ll be portable to pretty much any language and you will use them frequently.