Overview

The following set of tutorials should serve as a simple beginners guide to programming. It doesn't matter in which language that you learn to program in the principles are exactly the same, and ignore anyone that says one language is better than another as they are each created with different purposes in mind. For example you wouldn't use assembler to code a web page and you wouldn't use java or lisp on any realtime critical systems. Once you have learnt the principles you will find that you can easily apply them to any number of different languages, for example here are a few I have used in industry so far:

html(not strictly a programming language as it lacks conditional statements)
C
C++
SQL
Java
JavaScript
VB
VBScript
Perl
Python
bash
Haskell
Lisp
Pascal
Delphi
Assembler
BASIC (Q, GW, BBC)
Groovy
C#
XML(in combination with XSLT does provide computational power)
prolog
fortran
cobol
drools (now renamed to JBoss Rules)

But the point I am trying to make is that they all (maybe with the exception of html) function by using the same principles.

Getting Started

When I started to program the internet did not exist, in fact Java did not exist and instead of html there was something called PostScript. Thats right back in the 80's I started on a trusty old BBC Micro, then later a TRS-80 VIC20 and Acorn all using BASIC (Beginners, all-purpose, symbolic, instruction, code). It is for this reason that I suggested learning to program using BASIC, however there are much more accessible and simple to learn languages that let you do cool things quickly that I have changed my mind on this being the best starting place because you want to see things happen!

JavaScript That's right JavaScript its more accesible than any other language I can think of, if you have a text editor and a browser (sometimes only the browser is needed if it lets you edit source) then you can write and run JavaScript programs. By the way JavaScript is not to be confused with Java, JavaScript started life as a simple coding form for dynamic content developed by the Netscape team originally called LiveScript, it was later renamed by their marketing team to jump on the bandwagon and therefore shares almost no similarities

In order to actually get a browser to run any JavaScript that has been written there are 2 simple ways to do it. The first is to include any JavaScript inside 'script' tags. Simply create a text file that contains:

     <html>
      <script>
      //PLACE CODE HERE
      </script>
      <body  onLoad="start();" />
     </html>

and save it as test.html, when you open it in a browser nothing happens, don't worry it's supposed to do nothing but keep this test.html file around so you can paste any JavaScript in later. The second method of including JavaScript in html is to write the JavaScript in a file and name it smoething.js then write another file say test.html that contains the line <script language="javascript" src="path to .js file" />

Lets Go!

Well thats it lets get on with it Start!