is Java a good place to start? I have also been looking at online Computer Science degrees also. always had a interest in the hardware side. But would like to start exploring the Software side of things.

This post was edited by Blargfish on Jan 15 2013 06:22am

Ways to learn to program:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-00sc-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-spring-2011/index.htm
https://www.coursera.org/course/programming1
https://www.khanacademy.org/cs/tutorials/programming-basics
http://learnpythonthehardway.org/

Yes Java would be a good place to start.
Python would probably be even better.

www.udacity.com for free online courses about Python.

enrolled thanks :)

No problem.

I think they do a pretty good job of teaching how to program. The difficulty rises fairly quickly, but they've been adding more classes lately.

if you like hardware, an FPGA can be very fun

Woah, this is a major breakthrough in education.