Start with Python.

But first, get a GitHub account so you have a centralized location to store all of your code. Create 1 Git repository for each project including tiny projects such as "hello world!".

You won't learn anything if you're disorganized.

I think reverse racism and sexism is when a minority group is prejudiced towards a majority group.

But, that definition requires that GitHub define a scope to determine who is the minority and who is the majority.

Since you made this comment, I decided to re-learn all the math I ignored in high school—which was all of it—using Khan Academy.

Breaking down things into smaller easier problems is exactly what mathematics teaches you

I see exactly what you mean now. Factoring a quadratic equation is breaking it down into smaller pieces. As is simplifying radicals.

Ya, it sucked. And then I left them for a sports media company where I wrote plugins for a WordPress theme. That was even worse.

I need some guidance in how to start.

Create a need to learn, and then everything will fall into place.

For 8 years now, I wanted to learn Ruby on Rails. I would get as far as rails generate my_blog and then stop. Then I took on a contract job in which I promised a client a user authenticated Rails app. The contract provided 2 things that I never had before when learning Rails: 1) because I had to explain my development plan to the client, I thought through and documented how I was going to design and implement this app. Doing so provided a clear direction on my path to learning Ruby on Rails. 2) Because my bank account would be affected on my performance, I was sincerely motivated to turn out good work in short time.

I can't just write code for the hell of it. There has to be a compelling reason behind it.

There certainly is value in older technologies.

In my first job out of college in early 2009, I worked for a small company who supported large scale systems for grocery stores and warehouses. The codebase was in Delphi and would only run on Windows 95 through XP. The code was not tracked with source control. Some of the code they had me working on was first written before I was even born. At the time, the annual revenue was about $2 million for a company of 12 people.

Working in old technology is boring and documentation is sometimes sparse, which, is a challenge to anyone trying to learn this for the first time. All this makes folks with prior knowledge and experience that much more valuable to companies like this.

What then do you call someone who has been programming Java for 20 years, and who has been programming for decades before that?

A 20-year veteran who still writes code daily is, most likely, not a manager. Never have I met anyone this experienced who wasn't a manager.

It is aggravating, but expected.

A month and a half ago, Tom Preseton-Werner was interviewed on Bloomberg because GitHub was looking for a valuation of $2 billion in their latest funding round. Any time a company starts making serious money, dumb shit like placating the thin-skinned happens.

Reddit is currently going through the same bullshit.

• Hash (#)
• Bang (!)
• Shebang (#!)
• Whitespace: tabs and spaces

K&R C is the best book for learning C.

Modern publications will not provide you with more knowledge, but they will have "did you know?" text filling the margins, which is distracting.

I'm not a C programmer, but it is the language I was introduced to when first learning how to code. Writing small programs in C made it clear to me how code is represented in memory. You're certainly on the right path.

This book is what I used in college in 2006 for a data structures class.

I don't know why the field seems to be so generally unattractive to women

It isn't, you just happen to be in circles where there are no female coders.

If you don't like math programming isn't for you.

I don't like math and I'm currently employed as an iOS developer.

Programming is for everyone who is interested. It's not an old boys' club.

What will you do if you can't figure out a complex programming problem?

Break it down into smaller, easier problems and solve each one individually. Work smart, not hard.