Can I learn rudimentary programming from a book?

[starcraft]

SamuelRSmith said:
Well, no matter which language you chose I can help you out with the concepts. That's the beauty of programming, once you've learned one language you can pick up any of one straight off.

Though I must say, if your looking into going into programming as a career, don't learn loads of language-specific functions, try and learn and master the universal stuff, so that:

a) You don't need to know the language specific stuff
b) You can perform any task in just about any language.

As for learning languages at home: you need to have patience and a strong will, also, don't copy everything from the book the whole way through, experimenting with the code and combining things you've already learned with new concepts is a better way of mastering the language.

Like I said, though, if you have any issues, just sling me a PM and I will try and help you (I can't program in many languages (yet), but I should be able to help with the logic.)

It'll probably be some time from now while I get into this.

But I've bookmarked this thread and I may take you up on that thanks.