If you pick up a programming book, or any other tutorial, you are going to want to work along with it. Or I promise you, you won't learn a thing.

I don't recommend Codecademy at all, I have experience with their terrible teaching methods, and feel that they fail to properly teach the basics of programming. Codecademy also fails to allow their students to solve the problems that they are presented with in their own way; students are required to complete exercises with predetermined lines of code, where any deviation is a automatic failure.

I DO however suggest the http://thenewboston.org tutorials, which are very informative, digestible, and include every detail from the creating of the initial files to the end result.

P.S. W3Schools is awesome by the way, an amazing Web Design/Web Development reference site.

Hello Prkr5885! As a self-taught programmer who has been programming since 10 years old (currently 18), I would suggest that you begin with a quick-to-learn but difficult-to-master language like Java. Java is an object-oriented programming language that has syntax that is very similar to other languages such as C, C++ and C# (NOTE: C is not object-oriented). By learning Java you will pick up a solid understanding of the basics of computer programming. And hopefully you will learn object-oriented programming skills that you will put to use in other languages. For beginners, I highly recommend Java.

I do not recommend that you jump right into C++. If you don't feel like learning Java, C would be an excellent way to prepare you for C++. C++ is actually C with object-oriented features! Not to mention the syntax is almost identical.

The only way you will learn is with practice. In the computer programming world, you have to except the fact that you will never learn everything about every language and that your code will make other programmers cry tears of joy. Practice makes almost perfect. :)

You will get discouraged, heart-broken, and enraged by every little thing (even a ";"), but you must never EVER give up. No one is going to give you the answers or do your work for you, so you are going to need to work your butt off to be succeed. Patience and confidence are a must if you want to be a programmer.

Here are some sites you might want to visit:
- http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=31 | Java Basics
- http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=14 | C Basics
- http://thenewboston.org/list.php?cat=16 | C++ Basics
- http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ | C++ Documentation

- http://www.coderanch.com/forums | Java forum with many resources for beginners
- https://netbeans.org/ | NetBeans is a beautiful and well-made IDE for Java, C, and C++ development; I highly recommend it
- http://www.eclipse.org/ | An alternative IDE to NetBeans, slightly more powerful, but with a steeper learning-curve

P.S. IDEs are Integrated Development Environments, they help you code more efficiently and effectively with helpful tools like debugging, a built-in console, detailed error messages, code-finishing, etc.
P.P.S. Projects are your best friend, find ways to put your skills to use, even if it is on small projects at first.
P.P.P.S This is purely my opinion based on personal experience.

I wish you luck, and I hope you have fun. I'm sure you'll do well.