[carapace]

Those are two different questions.

> What would you suggest to a newbie getting his feet weight into programming?

Learn assembly.

(Something tidy like the AVR chip used in Arduinos: ATMega328P microcontroller, or the PIC.)

Then learn a little about C and the asm that it compiles into. (Again, don't try to learn e.g. x86. It's a monster. Most C compilers can target AVR or PIC.)

If you start at the bottom and go up you'll do fine.

Do NOT start with e.g. Javascript or PHP or even Ruby or Python, it'll wreck you.

> How did you master a programming language?

Someone once said to Yoyo Ma, "I'd give my life to play like you do." To which he replied, "I did."

"Do it every day."