What are some ideas and tips for someone learning how to program computers?

I never became a great adept at BASIC, but after working extensively with another language I knew how to understand the logic. Here’s what I did to gain a lot of familiarity and skill: I took a simple game (simple by today’s standards, anyway) written in BASIC and modified it. It was one of those adventure games where you move from room to room and collect things while avoiding dangers and fighting off monsters. I changed the theme, redesigned every room, changed the things you could find and the actions you could take with them, etc., all a little at the time over a period of a couple of weeks, while keeping it bug-free and playable at every step. In the end I think I changed virtually every line of code in the game, while learning which lines of code did what and what the working logic of the game was.

For me it was a great way to learn because I got to know the code as well as the original author did, and so I was in effect borrowing the brain of an experienced coder.

Google.com

The library. That should be all you need. Just start googling for tutorials and tips, get a couple books on programming in your chosen language from a library…

Decide what you want to achieve. It’s important to have something in mind you want to code, it will give you some objectives and present you with problems to work your way around.

Think about whether wou want to code a desktop application or web application, this will make a difference in appraoch and language. Use an open source language (free) with a good support community. They’ll help you when you get stuck and here will be lots of open source code to learn from.

All the best.
Paul