Well, I'm really forgetful so I can't remember some of the really long stuff. Plus I lost the book. But I do know the basic stuff.

Well, lets see now... I learned HTML in high school from my Introduction to Computers course, I learned AutoIt on my own with the help of a fairly close friend, and i learned basic javascript, intermediate CSS, and intermediate VisualBasic.NET in my Computer Technology course in Vocational.

I honestly want to buy that book

I am a software engineer and i have never done Classic to learn programming. I just read book and create my own program. Then i make some changes and run it. It i got an error then i take suggestion from my sir or book.

I learnt HTML as part of my college course last year. I'm learning CSS and JavaScript at college at the moment. I've also purchased 'PHP and MySQL for Dummies' off Amazon. I know a bit about PHP, but not a lot.

Believe it or not I could never learn anything with a book. I pretty much got MS Visual Basic Express one day like 4 years ago and started playing with it. Then some video tutorials helped me slowly.

Internet and Microsoft Press's program in vb.net book

Exactly what I did. Learnt VB.NET and C#.NET by messing with it. and now I want to mess with C

I learned mainly taking a VB IBM course, using several books and manuals and working with certified professionals; also again with IBM courses I saw a little of dBASE, Delphi 16 and 32, Pascal, Turbo C++ and Assembler.

I learn java, c, c++, php, mysql etc. in the school and i got much skills from the university. Its fun but the frustration is huge in the first years as beginner.

I learned html and java from my web design and computer programming classes at my high school. It was fun.

My first programming experiences came from books about the IBM mainframe MVS environment that I worked with at my job. Cobol, JCL(job control language), Jes2(job entry system 2) and IBM assembler code. Whatever keeps you curious about what you are doing that's the thing to do. TIP: If you are going to take the time and effort to learn a computer language then try to make it one that is not going to go obsolete later on. All that stuff I picked up back when is completely useless now. Linux is 98 percent written in good ol' C and FireFox is written in Java. These could be very, very interesting. OH almost forgot to mention pick a good programmers editor. Makes life vastly easier. Maybe a good forum question, What's your favorite editor? Well I hope that does'nt start a flame war. Programmers editors being an emotional religi-ous topic and all.

By editing things.
(What a simple answer, eh?)

I've learnt Visual Basic thanks to my college course, and Java is the other language I'm supposed to learn as well. I'd like to move onto Python and/or an iteration of C. Possibly Perl, too.

Delphi help and books. And hours around the PC

The worst choice ever was my first step into programming: ROBLOX.
The game helped me learn Lua, then I went onto VB.net (2008 and 2010) then C#. A good one I learn is Scratch and some Open Block coding, for example, Google's App Inventor for Android. Unfortunately, I can only use a limited emulator, but now I'm getting an Android phone.

I learned basic for C64 and a bit later assembly too.
When I bought my first PC in 1990 a got a message "Your PC is now Stoned!" sometimes...
So I decided to learn Intel assembly.

Well. I had work on BASIC Language (In General) for 5 years.

What start me programming?
When I had a game and it has QuickBASIC (qbasic.exe) with it. When I run it, it shows an module with code. When I run it, it Stops and generates an error. So I decide to fix it, and that was the key to programming.

What I had done after that?
1- I started with VBDOS, reading it's help, copying and pasting sample code, tracing it to know the functions of every line.
2- After 2 years, I had moved to Visual Basic 6.0 , which I use my knowledge in programming from VBDOS in designing the Forms and Modules. Then I refer to MSDN Library for expanded functions.

Since now, I still using VB6, but I wish to learn VB.NET and VB 2005. And they aren't differ so much from VB6.

When you want to learn programming language, refer to help and vary the programs that uses this language, and trace (move line-by-line) to know what it do.

The first 3 languages I learned (HTML, PHP, and MySQL, though I'm not sure if MySQL counts as a language):
- HTML: I used w3schools.org.
- PHP: Very little w3schools.org, and I mostly used the PHP manual.
- MySQL: I think a bunch of it was from the PHP manual.

I picked up a couple vb .net books from my library. It's painful to learn that way. Some times I just surf the web for help.

I started with BASIC (that was 1993) and I was only 5 at the time, was given an Amstrad 6128+ and the manual with it had programs you could code (some took forever as there was large amounts of code to type in) so I messed around and was able to get simple ink animations and bleeps to work. I learned C++ from a Borland C++ about 8 years ago with a Borland C++ book with CD and learned VB.net from college starting with 2003 and then 2005 . I was doing a degree in computer software and networking and learned VB 2005, and Java, but I can now program in Java but the pain in the butt having to code everything without having some code already there for you. I even was taught binary with the degree I did...I can now calculate binary but don't see much use for it really.

I started before VB with Visual C# 2003, prefer C# over VB and started by looking on the http://www.codeproject.com/ site and downloading some of the coding applications people made and started just doing little programming apps here and there. I got a big book on learning C# 2005 which helped. Been programming for over 10 years now. I even made a test program that emulated windows, it didn't work like a windows OS, but it did have a similar boot scree (loading window), login screen with login sound, desktop that you could connect to my computer and start menu button which worked similar and logoff/shudown screen. Even have a information window on your computer and network specs, but it was only a test program to test my programming skills, not trying to make a duplicate Microsoft OS. Just for my own programming testing, nothing more.

How I learned VB in college was that I was doing a joined software application with a friend of mine doing same course and we had to make a software app that used front end visual looks to connect to a database that stored information on peoples finances as there was a company looking for someone to do this so that their secretary could easily get and input data to the database without actually using the database, but rather a program that connected to it. Learned a lot as the hardest part was taking all the information from excel spreadsheet and moving it to a access database. If I recall we were able to edit the same project using something called subcommander, we both could login to server from it and edit the same program and download the updates we each made, Doing things like this defiantly makes you learn a lot.

IMO, just download sample code, find out what it does, e.g. what the buttons on the program does, if it has am loading window, what the code is for that etc.. also learn to code some programs from instructional sample programs from learning books, its good to have books as well as first hand sample code to see how it works.

I learned MySQL and MS Access database programming/excel VB programming but I learned it doing my computing degree but didn't take to it very well, thought I wanted to learn it, but got bored with it after a while.

I also learned HTML and Javascript from college doing web design as part of my computing degree (although my tutor wasn't too bright, and didn't care as he was retiring that year we had him, we all knew him as Mr Magoo as he looks exactly like him and acted a little like him) so I got books and checked source code from websites to see how HTML worked, and now I can program it easily and I am about to start working for myself as a web designer and am working on my own website.

The problem I now have is not coding a program in C# (which I use the most for making programs) but trying to figure out what kind of software app to do as everything seems to be done already...media players, zip programs, word processors etc... how do you get ideas for new software programs?

I learned C# and VB.NET by reading guides on the net and watching videos. I haven't programmed a single application with GUI in C#, only application with command line interface. But in VB.NET I am very good and in VB.NET I haven't programmed a single program with command line interface, only programs with GUI.

Examples. A lot of examples.

Books, examples and practice

I learned ASM by programming with zero-knowledge about it. I learned VB.NET and C# that way, it is best way for learning everything (for me).