Hello, I am going off to college to get into programming, and I have no knowledge of it. I am planning to study really hard during this 3 month summer to gain some background knowledge.

What would be the best way to start? I tried reading books but it's really confusing.

Help?

Paying FG.

http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html

ProgrammingGroundUp-1-0-booksize.pdf

download the second free from google. its a free ebook that goes into assembly but i use it mainly for showing how the stack and memory works.

the first link is what you really want to look at.

Thanks, and is there any tips you would reccomend me?

honestly the best way to do it is not to study, but just start making things.

download eclipse or visual studio, or stuff and just figure out how to make simple programs.

once you understand a little bit of what goes into programming, you can understand better what you're trying to learn

Not the best way to go around, imo, since you can learn to do programs the wrong way, and it will be difficult to fix later. Learn the basics first, and in the books theres always examples and problems they help you solve, so you'll be programming, and learning the right way as well.

I found that I was learning the best when I was actually creating programs that interest me, when you're creating programs and the like which are boring and you have no interest in whatsoever you really don't take in everything in my opinion but maybe thats just me.

This is very true, but for a complete beginner, determining one's limitations before actually trying can be hard. I'd recommend getting a book or other form of tutorial and solving the exercises from it as well.

My university I am going to requires MATLAB, is that something I can get and start practicing with? Or is there something else I can start solving excersis's with?

imo u should start with C++

dont buy books, just start with some online tutorial after which u will know syntax,class,etc and start to make ur own projects
this is imo the best option to learn

yeah my university uses c++ so thats good!