Just wanted to add something...
it'll be really short:
"Never start learning programing from VB..."
and if u can, stay away from vb for good...

I understand Visual Basic is pretty useful for writing Windows viruses... and not much else.

Like said before, the question is, what do you wanna do with it?

Option one, GAME PROGRAMMING

Try GameMaker, it's a great program with a very nice language: GML. The syntax of GML is pretty much equal to C++ so it's easy to change if you want to become a more expierenced programmer. You can download GM at www.gamemaker.nl and there's a very good forum at forums.gamemaker.nl.

The second option, WINDOWS APPLICATIONS

I personaly should try Visual Basic or C# since they're designed by Microsoft and you can make sweet applications with them. C++ is also an option.

-=jeroen=-

Actually thats not the case,
Visual Basic is completely useless when it comes to coding anything subtle, worms or viruses or anything that needs to be well crafted.
The main reason for this is: MSVBVM60.DLL..
i mean really, "i am sorry i cant start the virus, please install msvbvm60.dll so i can take over you computer, thanks in advance, the friendly virus."


VB is only useful for quick and dirty (notice DIRTY) gui aplications for windows.
thouse quick applications that it would be a drag to code in pure win32api because the main part of them is the interface and not the code.

I just got started learning to code myself. I went to a site called HTML Goodies and it can teach you about HTML, Perl, ASP, Javascript, Mysql and some others too I think. I've found it very helpful. I've wanted to learn coding for fun, for a game I've wanted to make. But someday maybe I'd like to do it for a career, who knows.

i want to know more about where to start - eg. what language is best for what i want
Where To Start Learning Programming

<a href=http://www.astahost.com/index.php?showtopic=8630&view=findpost&p=56904>Replying to Tamer78Aly</a>
Well I truly want to know where to start without later regreting that I started at the wrong place
Please advise me as I have this idea and want to put it into a program
Please let me know
My idea is a very intricate system to solve the problems of many issue in my work - printing is my line and I have a idea which I would like to put into a program
Please mail me back

Thank you
Craig van der Klashorst
South Africa
-craig

Here is an interesting link to somebody who is a skilled programmer, but wanted to decide for himself which language is most useful in general applications. He has done the best job I have seen comparing C++, Java, Python and Ruby.

He has chosen a relatively sophisticated computer-science problem, implementing a red-black tree for for maintaining a collection of data elements. He has coded it in all four languages, and constructed a very elegant HTML frame page in which you can compare any two of the languages side-by-side. As a result, you can just look at the different language constructions and get a sense of how the language is written, and what is needed to solve challenging problems.

If you are interested in trying them out, he even has the code in a zip file, so you can download it and work with it yourself. His conclusions are presented at the first link. Basically, when a programmer has chosen the relative importance of execution speed, portability, program clarity and ease of debugging, the programmer has probably chosen a language. Take a look!