i would like to learn to program i dont have enough money right now to go to a school and learn so i was going to "try" to teach myself but im not sure which one to learn so many of them out there, C C++ delphi visual basic yada yada yada lol anyways anyone have some ideas on which one i should learn.. i want to start making my own programs like add ons to programs and just complete new programs also thnx

Easy to learn would be visual basic. More powerful and more useable would be C++. Java is used for internet applications, and will work on any computer or OS. There is a post down the list a few entries that explains more.
If I were you, I'd learn C++.
-SN

HTML (not actually a language), JavaScript, PHP, Java, C, and C++ are all good in my opinion.

Go to a search engine and search for tutorials on the languages. You might also try getting a book from the library.

Here's my advice.

1. Start vid simple C programming, no fance trix and stuff, but you should feel comfortable with it.

2. Jump into java and try understand the "new" way of programming that includes classes and objects. Get the hang of that. Alright? You now know some basic programming as well as the Object Oriented thinking.

3. Make a last leap to C++, almost like java but has the power of C. Easy Peasy!

This might take at least a year. But hang in there boy... you don't become a good programmer over a night.

Good Luck Jim!

If it were me, I'd start with Java. I don't know Java myself, but I think it would be easiest to use in starting to make money, which would help you to pay for learning the others.

But partly, the answer depends on your interest. If what you like about computers is the internet, then Java is certainly the way to go. If you like peeking inside the operating system and making your computer do things nobody thought it could, then I would learn C. If your OS was Linux instead of WinME, I would suggest Python.

Jeff

The easiest is Visual Basic in my opinion. You can create very powerful Windows programs with this tool.
If you want to learn cross-platform programming then you do need to learn something like C++.
People underestimate VB for Windows programs because of it's not-so-good older versions. The newest version 7.0(aka .net) is awesome and it is completely object-oriented and has all the bells and whistles that VC++ has with the ease of its language.
So it depends on what kind of apps you want to develop.

if you really want to be on top of things get yourself a copy of vs.net and learn C#. i am very well versed in C++, java, vb, perl, html and many others and c# seems to be a very good mixture of all of them. it is very object oriented like java, but it has the backing of ms so you can do basically anything you want with it on a windows platform. also it is much faster than java. anything that is written in vb can be converted to c# because they use many of the same classes. i would stay away from knowing only something like vb vb is nice if you just want to whip something up to test an idea or something, but its really slow, and personally, i think the syntax is very clunky.

Or you can learn RPG... easy for DB I/O access, and there is a visual compiler for it... I think it will be integrated with Visual Studio .NET next year or so..

As was stated before, VB is a good place to start. If you are choosing between c, c++, and java, I would start with java. True it isn't as fast or powerful, but for learning to program, java is definitely the way to go. And since java has many similarities to c++, once you learn some java it will be easier to pick up on advanced c++ stuff.