I had some intrinsic interest as a kid after realizing the computer had much more application than just games and as a word processor. Usually smooths over a lot easier if you have an interest in a particular topic. For example if you have interest in building small gadgets and such (out of a Raspberry Pi for example) , then C / Python are up your alley. If you want to build webpages from scratch, you may want to learn some markup languages like HTML, CSS, then learning some Javascript.
I took a liking to game dev on the Java platform ( I know... Java...
) and created a few small prototypes and self contained demos. It kind of gave me enough of a background into Java to start taking courses in web development on the Java stack and it grew from there. Programming is something you learn really from doing, trial and error, debugging, throwing mice at your monitor, and if all else fails, you stack overflow everything you have problems with
. I'd say it's not something you can learn directly from watching other people do. However, usually educational videos on programming typically contain tutorials that end up giving you the code or short snippets you can work with, so in the end you have to put in the legwork anyway
As for which language to start first, I'd recommend C programming, since it is the basis for many operating systems and AFAIK other languages stem from C, including C++, C#, and Java. I'm likely to be missing quite a few but they're off the top of my head. However there's something to be said for starting anywhere, as long as you are enjoying the process!
Good luck.
This post was edited by Zored on Aug 11 2016 02:25am