Part 3: Teaching Yourself

1. Start with a good book or tutorial on programming. Get a good, current book on the programming language you want to learn. Reviews on Amazon or similar sites will usually help you identify helpful books from unhelpful ones.

2. Get an interpreter for that language. An interpreter is just another computer program but it will convert ideas you've written in a programming language into "machine code" so you can see things work. Lots of programs are available and you will need to choose one that is appropriate for you.

3. Read the book! Take examples of the programming language from the book and put them into your interpreter. Try changing the examples and making the program do different things.

4. Try putting together your own ideas to form a working program. Start with simple things, like a program to convert currencies, and work your way up to more complex things as you continue reading and learning about your programming language.

5. Learn another language.  Once you start actively programming in your first language, you may want to learn a second one. You'll get the most out of learning a second programming language if you pick one that uses a radically different paradigm than the one you started with. For instance, if you started in Scheme, you might try learning C or Java next. If you started in Java, you could learn Perl or Python.

6. Continue programming and trying new things! To be a good programmer you, at the very least, have to keep up with changing technology. It's a constant learning process, and you should always be learning new languages, new paradigms, and most importantly: programming new things!