Know a good beginners programming class online?

My IT background is in LAN admin with Windows and WAN admin with Cisco. So far, I have not had any need for programming languages. However, that is about to change. My last programming class was nearly ten years ago. I've looked at a couple of programming books "for beginners" but by the middle of the second chapter, they are throwing up samples of code that are way beyond the text that was written to that point and I just get completely lost. I suppose they assume some sort of programming knowledge prior to the book.

Can anyone recommend a good online program through a college that would teach me my first high-level programming language without losing me in chapter two? I figure I need to learn VisBasic first before moving to C++ then C# but I'm not so sure that really matters anymore, based on some conversations I've had with programmers recently.

Or maybe an educational software package that might teach me a language. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

Don't know of any good online programming classes, but you don't need to learn VB or C++ before learning C#. However, I think most beginning courses will probably use VB 2005 or Java. I would look at About.com. They have some good forums and reviews of programming books.

 

Thanks Edowave! I checked out About.com and found tons of info that I will explore.

 

I'd probably avoid VB at this point, unless you work for an employer that uses it. C# is taking over as the language of choice for Windows development. Java and C++ are both still very good options, though C++ can be hard to learn as a first language since you can do just about every simple statement in at least 2 different ways (in part due to it's backward-compaticbility with C).

But no, I can't help you on a specific class. One of these years I'll get GSC's programming courses online.

 

A number of schools have gone C# as their main Language. Java has enjoyed the last 10 years of being the preferred into language, however the point is learning structure in your first courses the languages isn't really a big deal.

Now if you goal is to work in C#, then you might want to start with a C# starter course designed as a CS0/1/2 type book.

 

For what it's worth, C# is fine if you go the MS route - but you may also want to consider JSP (a nice practical intro to Java IMO).

An alternative is to pick up a few 'Teach Yourself...' books at the bookstore and browse a bit to see which suits your style and learning ability. Seems like an hour or two at the bookstore could ferret out a direction that may last a lifetime (or at least, many years).

Just my 2 cents...

Greg

 

check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/beginner

 

You can check out your community colleges for an online course in the C languages. It's really affordable.

 

A community college professor in Texas has posted online a large selection of tutorials that he has written.

http://www.dickbaldwin.com/

 

If you can find a course in straight C (rather than C++)... if you can, this *is* a nice route. Much like Pascal courses of 15 to 20 years ago - straight C is a very nice way to learn structured programming, along with many important low-level concepts, like how memory management works and how data is physically stored in computers.

Ideally, the way to learn programming is either to start with something fairly low-level (like C) and work your way into an object-oriented language, or start with objects (Smalltalk/Squeak or *some* Java courses) and work your way down to the lower-level structured programming.

Several studies have shown that people struggle with starting in the middle - with either C++ or Java (without starting exclusively with objects first) and trying to simultaneously learn procedural and object-oriented programming concepts.

Regardless, community colleges are a great resource for inexpensive intro courses.

 

I know this is an old thread but www.vtc.com has great beginning programming videos for $30 per month. They even provide samples with the language you're interested in. I think they're associated with Lynda.com