Coding Basics

It depends on what you want to achieve, but if you have a windows machine...

If you want to become a VB/VC++ programmer and you have never programmed a line of code in your life, I always feel that a week or two on QBasic will do the world of good. This is because I have seen people sit down at VB and drag and drop a load of controls onto their application. Then, eventually, they are presented with a blank text window and they are expected to let go of the mouse and start programming. At which point they feel overwhelmed. A week on QBasic can teach you procedural programming (loops,branches,conditions,subroutines,etc) which you can employ (with a slight change in syntax) when VB presents you with that blank text window.

At first C can seem very awkward. It may seem straight forward to a someone who comes from a low level background (assembly code). I would recommend the dos environment again when first tackling C/C++. (I would still recommend a little time on QBasic to the total beginner.)

The trouble with visual development environments is that after you have dragged and dropped or run a wizard you suddenly have a steep learning curve.

Also, don't sit down and try to plough through whole books before attempting anything. Get your hands dirty as soon as possible.

Try this in QBasic :-
User inputs a number which is the temperature in centigrade. Convert it and print out the equivalent farenheight value... Then give yourself loads of these little projects to do.

Try this in C :-
User inputs a few strings (sentences)
Record them all then print them out backwards.

I agree.