Before I start asking away I would like introduce myself to the community. If you look at my joined date it is fairly new compared to most people.
First thing is that I am in my senior year of highschool and I decided to go into computer science. To be more specific programming. I've talked to people and I learned
that java is the way to if I am looking forward to working for companies and such. I looked around and managed to get a book called "Java 2" but I am not sure if just reading
it is the right way to start java. I would like some input from Veterans as to where I should start from.

Short summary: I want to start working on java with little time I have left before I move on to college seeing that I am already 18 and know nothing of programming yet i need a lot of guidance



Thank You all

It doesn't hurt to learn some basic familiarity with programming languages, but don't expect to learn anything beyond basic syntax and program structure until you get a pretty solid foundation of computer science / software engineering concepts.

If you have a bunch of time to burn and want to get a head start on your college courses, you'll be better off with a guided course like this one:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-fall-2008/index.htm

Alternatively there's Harvard's CS50, which looks pretty cool, but I can't vouch for its usefulness/ease-of-learning because I haven't really looked into it:
https://www.cs50.net/

Last but not least, the language you use to learn CS concepts and principles doesn't really matter all that much... and if there's any value judgement to be made on choice of language, it's "The simpler it is, the better." So as a result, Python tends to be the language of choice for a lot of (really good) CS curricula.

This post was edited by irimi on Dec 17 2012 02:08pm

So assuming if I am interpreting you said is that I should learn python first before I try java. Should I just search for a tutorial of python or like everyone i am suppose to just start it and I'll learn somehow.

google LEARN PYTHON THE HARD WAY

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Don't bother with trying to learn python specifically. Again your goal is not to learn a language, but to learn programming. The course I linked will teach you / make you learn the Python that you need along the way.

In my entire education and career, I have never had to explicitly learn a language... the language is something you pick up while doing something else.

Ok I will give it a go thank you for helping me start out. Really appreciate it.

Sure thing - and if you have any trouble with learning/understanding the course material, you can certainly ask around here.

Also is the learn python the hard way a legit thing.. Because I actually googled it and read the exercise 0 and such and such

Looks fine to me.

who's the neko in your sig? is she from a game?