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I'll sidestep the language wars; true programming greatness comes only when
you've mastered your third language, anyway <ducks>.**
If you do want to teach yourself, I suggest you set yourself a small,
real-world project to complete that you can use when you've finished it.
Some utility that scratches one of your personal itches. Even better, get
someone else to set you such a task. Just don't put a deadline on it.
I also recommend you read something like Steve McConnell's "Code Complete"
(1993; Microsoft Press; ISBN: 1556154844) or "The Pragmatic Programmer" by
Hunt, Thomas and Cunningham (1999; Addison-Wesley Pub Co; ISBN: 020161622X).
These books aim to teach you some of the craft of programming, rather than
how to apply specific languages.
If you're going to work in a modern language, you might want to read up on
Object-Oriented design and programming techniques; you don't need to know
about OO to work in VB, but a good grounding is pretty well essential for
Java, Python, etc. I can't help you with specific references here, I'm
afraid; check out Amazon.
Cheers,
Sean M.
**I read it somewhere.
> Subject: Jumpstart a programming ability
> From: John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
[...]
> If you weren't a programmer, but you wanted to increase your strength
> as a technical writer by adding a programming ability, what would you
> go for [...]
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