Programming is terrible

Here are some of the ideas I wanted to highlight. Next time somebody ask me "I want to learn how to program" my first question, and it should be a question that I ask rather than telling them straight off, is "What do you want to create?" "What do you want to build?"

So just on a bit of random unsolicited advice:

• If you do want to learn programming, find the languages and the tools that your friends use because otherwise you're going to be screwed when you need help.
• Find something that's easy to install.
• Find something that doesn't require going through a 300 page manual on how to open acertain dialog box and navigate through the menus. It's just not fun.
• Don't worry about object orientation, functional programming and all of the crazy things that some of your friends with weird hair are talking about.

Really learning to program should be about play. It should be getting things up and running in an afternoon and seeing what happens. It should really just be about poking things. And hopefully not crashing your computer. Learning programming shouldn't be the means to an end. It should be something you're doing in order to do something actually fun!