Can I learn rudimentary programming from a book?

[SamuelRSmith]

@NJ5

When I started programming, I often made threads on forums asking people which language I should start with, people gave me different advice, but the majority said C++ (which isn't surprising as I often asked game development and emulation sites), so I tried C++.

I bought a book, I studied tutorials on the web, and I worked hard to get "with it", but I really couldn't understand what was going on, and I developed a true distaste for the language.

So, I went with VB. People often criticise VB, but I loved it. I found the code a lot easier to understand, I preferred the articles on the web about it, and I didn't have to worry about things like pointers.

Now, I haven't been back to C++ since, but I have played around with other languages, such as C#, and with the skills I learned with VB I was able to understand and use C# with relative ease. Looking through my C++ book there aren't any concepts that I fail to understand in there anymore.

What did I learn from this? That your starting language is really important, and spending time playing around with a few languages at the start can save hours of frustration later on.

It may not be the best advice, most people will probably push through with a language, but I didn't have that kind of motivation, and so this approach worked best for me.