[zweben]

Nope. I'm a web designer and I have some interest in programing, but all I know is a little Actionscript.

I come here for the high quality discussion on the articles I do understand, and I read the occasional programming story just to see if I can get anything out of it.

[mishmash]

Have you noticed any desire to program more since you started coming here?

[notahacker]

Oddly, I'd say it has the opposite effect to a certain extent (Similarly, I'm pretty familiar with front end web development but am most definitely not a hacker)

StackOverflow produce concise and clear answers, Rails webcasts insist (sometimes not entirely convincingly) that everything is quick and easy. HackerNews is frequented far more by programmers with serious breadth and depth of interest and far less by people looking for a quick fix or help with the learning curve. The resulting fondness for arcane languages and esoteric solutions can at times be overwhelwing even for the motivated novice.

On the one hand I think it's important for even non-tech people interested in that startup ecosystem to gain a basic understanding of how hackers think and the choices they face, which is my chief motivation for reading a lot of the programming articles posted here.

[zweben]

Not really. I've had a slight interest in programming for years, but I'm more interested in design.

I'd like to develop an iPhone game, but I don't think I have enough motivation or focus to make it up the steep learning curve. I made a Pong clone in Actionscript, that was as far as I got. The only project idea I have right now is pretty complex; I think I'd need a more modest goal to start with.

[imagii]

(I'm in a similar situation) I've learned bits of PHP and Java in the past, but I wouldn't call it being a programmer.

Thanks to HN, I've decided to properly learn to program.

I'm buying a book on Python (http://amzn.to/bUMPCP), and I'm taking C++ in the upcoming semester.

[samratjp]

1) Learn python with these two resources: a.This is for absolute beginners http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput....

b.Do these exercises for some extra oomp - http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/exe.... there are some video lectures if required

They're much more better and practical than any ole paperback.

[staid]

Finishing with .../electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/ works for first link (although google also shows a much longer link for a python course from the same url) http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/ works for the second. Thanks.

[mishmash]

Cool, hope your journey goes well.