Hi againI know nothing about computer programming at all, but would like to learn. I used to tinker with basic, many, many years ago, but gave up. Since there are many programmers here, what books or other ways/formats would you suggest to get me started?Thanks for any repliesAK

Basic is fine to start with, you can certainly learn all the concepts of programming. It's not a "disciplined" language, so you need to be careful not to learn sloppy habits. If I were you I'd go down to the local bookstore and start thumbing through some beginning programming books until you find something that "speaks" to you. Then it's just a matter of working through each and every lesson, skipping nothing no matter how dull or obscure it might seem at the time. Once you understand the concepts of programming there isn't any language you can't master -- given the present stage of computing I'd certainly go from Basic to VB (assuming you didn't start with VB) to VC++. After that it is a *very* small step to Java (almost the same -- don't jump on me, you Javaphiles) and C#. That ought to stand you in stead no matter where you want to take your programming skills.

We did some programming at my schol this year. We used C++, Java, and Visual Basic 6.Visual Basic is excellent if you're looking for something that is easy. But you can still do fairly complex programs with VB.Java is quite fun too, and it CAN be used for MUCH more than just simple animations on websites.I wouldn't recommend C++ or C. All those pointers and virtual functions and whatever made me dizzy...

Thanks for the replies :-)AK

Here's a good site to help, with good tutorials, white papers, etc...http://devcentral.iftech.com/Registration on the site is free, and it can certainly help you get a feel for the various languages out there. I like VB because it serves up almost instant gratification--Landclass Assistant was written in VB for this reason--it took me only an hour or two to pound out the code for that app. I'd say 99 percent of the programming challenges are found in the user interface...VB and even Visual C++ to some degree helps. My first VB app was a shareware CD music database, which I called CDBase. I received enough payments from that small proggie to pay for VB, and the 30 minutes it took me to code the program!-John