Best Way To Learn Programming

Ok, first of all this is excluding the obvious answer of going to a programming class.  This is also assuming that you have enough basic programming knowledge that most beginner tutorials are kind of a waste of time.  This is a phase that many self taught programmers get stuck in.  They can program enough that writing 'Hello World' isn't going to teach them anything.  Unfortunately there are not near as many intermediate tutorials out there as there are beginner tutorials.  However there is still hope for self teaching.

The method I have used to expand my programming knowledge after the beginner stage was to simple write lots of programs.  Any time I would think of something that could be done by the computer, I would make it into a program.  I got to the point where I wanted to program but could not think of any ideas of what to make.  At that point I started to ask the people around me if they had any ideas of programs that they would like to use but have never seen.  I have found that a very good way to learn programming is to just program.  My recontamination to anyone who wants to learn programming is to write every program that comes to mind.  Even if you are not sure how to do everything that will be needed for that program, go ahead and start it and when you find you need to do something that you have no clue how to do, google it. If you can't figure out what google tells you or there is not very much info on the topic you need, you could also find help at a talk board for the language you are using.  If Visual Basic .NET is your thing, which I would think it is since you are reading this, then VB.NET Forums is a pretty good place to go for help.  When you are thinking of ideas to make, it is good to be ambitious, but only to a point.  You must keep your ideas realistic, you don't know how badly I would like to write SKYNET, but that just isn't going to happen from one person with no AI experience.  You can make the program do something very complex or difficult, but you need to keep the scale relatively small or you will have to devote a huge amount of time to writing it and you won't be able to learn other things.

So basically, the best way, in my opinion, to learn programming is to practice.  I know that is a foreign concept to many people.  But practice really does help.  Also try to work together with other programmers, sometimes they will have a different way of doing things that you may like.

I hope you enjoyed this and maybe learned something.  Remember if you have any ideas for future topics, please email them to me.