Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years——用十年教会自己编程

 

作者：Peter Norvig

译者：刘海粟

本文原文为：http://norvig.com/21-days.html

该翻译文档的PDF版可以在这里获得：http://download.csdn.net/source/2983778

为何万事都如此仓促？
随便走进一家书店，你就能看到《7天学会Java》以及各种万变不离其宗的书籍，形如：在数天或是数小时内学会Visual Basic、Windows系统、互联网等等。我在亚马逊 做了个高级搜索 ：
pubdate: after 1992 and title: days and
(title: learn or title: teach yourself) [1]
共得到了248个结果。前78个是计算机类图书(第79个是《30天学会孟加拉语 》)。我把搜索中的“days (天)”替换成“hours (小时)”，结果得到了一个相似度惊人的结果：253本书中，前77本都是计算机类图书，紧随其后的第78本是《24小时内教会自己语法与格调 》。而在200名之后，有96%是计算机类图书。
由此可见：要么是人们都在急匆匆的学习计算机，要么就是出于某种原因计算机比其他任何东西都要好学。而没有一本书是关于如何在数日之内学会贝多芬或是量子 力学甚至是狗的饲养的。Felleisen等人在《如何设计程序 》中也指出了这一趋势，他们说：“糟糕的编程非常简单，蠢货都能在21天的时间内学会，即便他们就是根木头都可以！”
让我们来分析一下诸如《三天内学会C++ 》这样的标题意味着什么：
学 会： 3天的时间，你完全没有时间去完成一些大型程序，也无法从其中的成功与失败中汲取知识。你也没有时间和一个有经验的程序员一起工作并熟悉C++环境下的开 发是个什么样子。总之，你没有时间去深入的学习。所以这种书只能给你一个肤浅的认识而非深入的理解。正像Alexander Pope说的——一知半解是件危险的事情。
C++： 3天内你可能学会一些C++的语法(前提是你学过其他编程语言)，但你学不到如何去使用这种语言。总而言之，如果你是——比方说——一个Basic程序 员，你或许能学会以Basic的风格用C++语法编程，但你无法掌握C++真正的优点(或缺点)。问题何在？Alan Perlis 曾说过：“如果一种语言不能影响你的编程思路，那就不值得学习。”唯一合理的解释就是你只需要学习一丁点的C++(类似的还有JavaScript或是 Flash的Flex)以便为了某个特定目标而去连接一个现有工具的接口。但如果这样，你就不是在学习如何编程，而仅仅是在学习如何完成你的目标而已。
三天内： 很不幸，正像我们在下一节中要展示的那样，这远远不够。


用十年教会自己编程
研究员们(Bloom (1985) , Bryan & Harter (1899) , Hayes (1989) , Simmon & Chase (1973) )已经指出在许多领域中想达到精通都需要花费十年左右的时间，这其中包括国际象棋、音乐创作、电报操作、绘画、钢琴演奏、游泳、网球以及对神经心理学或是 拓扑学的研究。关键在于用心去练习：并非仅仅是一遍又一遍的单纯重复，而是要去挑战一个刚好高于你目前水平的目标。去尝试，并在做的时候以及完成后分析自 己的表现，指出所有的错误。之后重复，再重复……这没有捷径：甚至是莫扎特——4岁时他就是个音乐神童了，但一样是用了13年的时间才创作出世界级的音 乐。另一个例子，虽然看上去甲壳虫乐队是在1964年的埃德·沙利文秀上一夜走红的，但其实他们早在1957年就开始在利物浦和汉堡的小俱乐部中演出了， 而且虽然很早就受到大众的青睐，但他们第一次重要的成功却是1967年发行的专辑——《Sgt. Peppers》。Malcolm Gladwell 公布了一份关于柏林音乐学院学生的研究报告，比较了优等、中等和后进的三类学生并为他们制定了练习时间：
三组 人从几乎相同的年龄开始练习演奏——大约五岁左右。起初的几年中，每个人都练习几乎相同的时间——每周2到3个小时。但到了八岁左右的时候，真正的差距开 始出现了。那些班中最优秀的学生的练习量开始超过其他人：九岁时达到每周6小时，十二岁时每周8小时，十四岁时每周16小时，越来越多。到了二十岁的时 候，他们每周的练习时间超过了30小时。二十岁时，在精英演奏者的人生历程中共计练习了10,000小时。相较之下，仅仅是好学生的练习时间只有 8,000小时，而未来的音乐教师仅有4,000小时的练习。


所以，或许10,000小时——而不是10年——才是一个神奇的数字。Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)认为这可能要花更长的时间：“要实现任何领域的卓越才能都是需要毕生奋斗的——不会再有更低的代价来获得它了。”而Chaucer (1340-1400)则抱怨“人生短暂，但却有太多技艺要学。”Hippocrates (约公元前400年)因那句“ars longa, vita brevis”而闻名，全文是“Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile”，这话用中文 [2] 表达出来既是“技艺永恒，生命短暂，机会易逝，实验诡诈，抉择艰难”。虽然在拉丁文中“ars”一词既可以表示“艺术”也可以表示“技术”，但在原本的希 腊文中“techne”一词则只有“技能”的意思而非“艺术”。
以下是我编程成功的诀窍：

对编程产生兴趣，并试着从兴趣出发去做些什么。你要确信它能持续的给你带来乐趣好让你能够为它倾注十年的心血。
与其他程序员交流，阅读其他的程序。这比任何一本书或一项训练都要重要。
编 程。学习的最好方式就是边做边学 。更学术性的说：“在特定领域内，个人能力的最高上限无法通过长期经验而自动获得。但即便是经验丰富的个人也可以通过刻意的努力而获得经验的提高。” (p. 336 )并且“最为有效的学习需要针对特定个体、信息反馈以及重复和改正错误的机会有一个适当难度的明确目标” (p. 20-21)。《实践中认知：日常生活中的思想，数学与文化 》是一本对于该观点有趣的参考书籍。
如果你愿意，在大学中投入四年的时间(或者继 续在研究生学院投入更多的时间)。这将使你获得一些工作的入门资质，并且会给你一些关于这个学科更加深入的认识，而如果你不喜欢上学，你也可以(需要一些 贡献)在工作中获得类似的经验。但无论如何，仅仅看书是绝对不够的。“计算机科学的教育不会让任何人成为专业程序员，正如研究笔刷和颜料不会让任何人成为 专业画家一样。”，《新黑客辞典》的作者Eric Raymand如是说。我所聘用过的最好的程序员之一 [3] 仅拥有高中学历。他却创造出了很多伟大 的软件 ，拥有他自己的新闻组 ，甚至在股票期权中赚到足够的钱买下一家自己的夜总会 。
与其他程序员共同完成一些项目。在某些项目中成为最出色的程序员，而在其他一些项目中成为最糟糕的。当你最出色时，你将有机会测试自己领导一个项目的能力，并且以你的视野去激励其他人。当你最糟糕时，你要学习大师们做了什么，而不喜欢做什么(因为他们让你去为他们做)。
从其他程序员那里接手一些项目。理解其他人编写好的程序。看看有什么需要理解的，并在原作者不在的时候试着自己去解决一些问题。考虑一下如何设计你的程序能让它更容易被那些从你手里接手项目的人们理解。
学 习至少六种编程语言。其中包括一种支持类抽象的语言(如Java或C++)，一种支持函数抽象的语言(如LISP或ML)，一种支持语法抽象的语言(如 LISP)，一种支持声明规范的语言(如Prolog或C++模板)，一种支持协程的语言(如Icon或Scheme)以及一种支持并行处理的语言(如 Sisal)。
牢记在“计算机科学”中有一个“计算机”。你要知道计算机需要多长时间去执行你的一条指令、需要多长时间从内存中读取一个字(带有或不带有缓存缺失)、需要多长时间从磁盘中连续读取字符以及需要多长时间完成磁盘的重新定位。(答案在这里 )
参与一个语言的标准制定工作。这可以是ANSI C++委员会项目，也可以仅仅是决定你的代码是用2个还是4个空格作为缩进。但无论如何，这将会让你学到其他人对语言的偏好以及他们到底对此有多么偏好，甚至你还可能明白为什么他们会有此偏好。
拥有尽快从语言标准化工作中抽身的理智。

出于以上经验，我很怀疑你能从书本中学到多少。在我第一个孩子出生前，我读了所有的指南书籍，但依然感到茫然无措。30个月之后，当我第二个孩子出生的时 候，我还需要回去复习那些书籍么？不，这次完全凭借我的个人经验了。这对我来说显然比专家们写的数千页的纸张更有效果。
Fred Brooks，在他的文章《没有银弹 》中指出了寻找一位伟大的程序设计者的三个步骤：
尽早系统的确定一批顶级设计者队伍。
指派一个业务主管来负责前景的发展以及确保职业规划。
为增进设计师们的互相影响与激励提供足够的机会。

这样做的前提是已经假定了某人具有一个伟大设计者所应有的素质，他要做的只是去引导其他人的前进。Alan Perlis 将这些变得更加简洁：“每个人都能学会雕塑：米开朗基罗这样的人反倒需要学习如何不去雕塑。伟大的程序员也是如此。”
所以，尽管去买那本Java的教程吧。或许你能从中学到些什么，但你不会因此改变人生，也不会在24小时、24天甚至是24个月之后成为一个真正的程序员。


参考文献：
Bloom, Benjamin (编)《在年轻人中培养人才 》, 百龄坛, 1985.
Brooks, Fred, 《没有银弹 》, IEEE计算机, vol. 20, no. 4, 1987, p. 10-19.
Bryan, W.L.和Harter, N.《电报语言研究：一种习惯上的收获》, 心理学回顾, 1899, 8, 345-375
Hayes, John R., 《完全问题求解 》, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989.
Chase, William G.和Simon, Herbert A.《国际象棋的感知 》, 认知心理学, 1973, 4, 55-81
Lave, Jean, 《实践中认知：日常生活中的思想，数学与文化 》, 剑桥大学出版社, 1988.

答案：
在典型PC机上各种操作的近似时间：
执行典型指令
1/1,000,000,000 秒 =1 纳秒

从一级缓存中读取数据
0.5 纳秒

分支预测错误
5 纳秒

从二级缓存中读取数据
7 纳秒

互斥锁定 / 解锁
25 纳秒

从主存储器中读取数据
100 纳秒

在 1Gbps 的网络中发送 2KB 数据
20,000 纳秒

从内存中读取 1MB 数据
250,000 纳秒

从新的磁盘位置读取数据 ( 寻轨 )
8,000,000 纳秒

从磁盘中读取 1MB 数据
20,000,000 纳秒

在美国向欧洲发包并返回
150 毫秒 =150,000,000 纳秒



附录：语言的选择
许多人都问我应该首先学习哪种编程语言。答案并不唯一，但需要考虑以下几点：

善 用你的朋友们。每每被问及“我该用哪种操作系统，Windows、Unix还是Mac？”的时候，我的回答总是：“用你的朋友们都在用的那种。”你在朋友 那里学到的东西要远大于操作系统或编程语言之间的固有优势。但也要考虑到你未来的朋友：若你继续学习，你肯定会加入到某个程序员社区中去。你所选择的语言 是否拥有一个大规模发展的社区？还是濒临灭绝？是否有足够的书籍、网站或在线论坛让你寻找答案？你是否喜欢那些社区中的人们？
保持简单。像 C++或Java这种编程语言是为那些由关心他们代码执行效率且经验老道的程序员组成的大规模团队来进行专业开发而设计的。因此，这些编程语言都拥有为这 些情况而设计的复杂结构。你关心的是学习编程，而不是那些复杂的东西。所以你需要的是一种为了程序员新手便于记忆和学习而设计的语言。
运行。你更喜欢哪种学习钢琴演奏的方式：正常的交互模式，当你按下一个琴键的时候立刻就可以听到对应的音符。还是“批发”模式，只有在你完成整段乐曲之后才能听到声音？显然互动模式让学习钢琴变得更简单，编程亦是如此。坚持一种交互模式的语言并使用它。

给出以上这些准则，我建议首先学习的语言是Python 或Scheme 。但你自身的情况可能有所不同，所以还有很多其他不错的选择。如果你的年龄是个位数，你可能更喜欢Alice 或Squeak (年长一些的学习者可能也会喜欢这些)。重点在于——你选择并且你开始。

附录：书籍与其他资源
常有人问有哪些书籍或网站可以学习。我重申“仅仅看书是绝对不够的”，但我可以推荐以下这些：
Scheme： 《计算机程序的结构与诠释 》(Abelson和Sussman)可能是对计算机科学最好的介绍，同时作为了解计算机科学的一种途径，本书也讲解如何编程。你可以看这本书的在线视频 讲座 ，或是完整的在线文本 。这本书具有挑战性并将淘汰一些用其他方法取得成功的人。
Scheme： 《如何设计程序 》(Felleisen等编)是一本非常优秀的介绍如何用典雅又不失实用的方式去编程的书籍。
Python： 《Python编程：计算机科学导论 》(Zelle)是一部用Python完成的不错的导论。
Python： Python网站 上的一些在线教程 都是非常实用的。
Oz： 《计算机编程的概念，技术和模型 》(Van Roy和Haridi)被认为是当代Abelson与Sussman的继承者。本书通过编程的整体构思，在更易于阅读和学习的同时，较之Abelson与 Sussman获得了更广泛的视野。该书使用了一种叫做Oz的编程语言，虽然它并不被大众所知，但可以很好的作为其他语言的基础来学习。


作者注释：
T. Capey指出，亚马逊网站上《完全问题求解 》一书的页面中，“购买此商品的顾客也同时购买”一项里已经出现了《30天学会孟加拉语》和《24小时内教会自己语法与格调》。我猜这其中大部分的人是从 此文中看到那些书的。感谢Ross Cohen在Hippocrates问题上对我的帮助。

译者注释：
[1]意为：出版日期在1992年之后，题目中含有“天”并同时含有“学习”或“自学”。 返回>>
[2]原文中为“in English”，是把之前的拉丁文翻译为英文。因为本文是翻译稿，所以直接说成中文。 返回>>
[3]指Jamie Zawinski——XEmacs和Netscape Navigator的创始人。 返回>>

========================================

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
Peter Norvig

Why is everyone in such a rush?
Walk into any bookstore, and you'll see how to Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours alongside endless variations offering to teach C, SQL, Ruby, Algorithms, and so on in a few days or hours. The Amazon advanced search for [title: teach, yourself, hours, since: 2000 and found 512 such books. Of the top ten, nine are programming books (the other is about bookkeeping). Similar results come from replacing "teach yourself" with "learn" or "hours" with "days."

The conclusion is that either people are in a big rush to learn about programming, or that programming is somehow fabulously easier to learn than anything else. Felleisen et al. give a nod to this trend in their book How to Design Programs, when they say "Bad programming is easy. Idiots can learn it in 21 days, even if they are dummies." The Abtruse Goose comic also had their take.

Let's analyze what a title like Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours could mean:

    Teach Yourself: In 24 hours you won't have time to write several significant programs, and learn from your successes and failures with them. You won't have time to work with an experienced programmer and understand what it is like to live in a C++ environment. In short, you won't have time to learn much. So the book can only be talking about a superficial familiarity, not a deep understanding. As Alexander Pope said, a little learning is a dangerous thing.

    C++: In 24 hours you might be able to learn some of the syntax of C++ (if you already know another language), but you couldn't learn much about how to use the language. In short, if you were, say, a Basic programmer, you could learn to write programs in the style of Basic using C++ syntax, but you couldn't learn what C++ is actually good (and bad) for. So what's the point? Alan Perlis once said: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing". One possible point is that you have to learn a tiny bit of C++ (or more likely, something like JavaScript or Processing) because you need to interface with an existing tool to accomplish a specific task. But then you're not learning how to program; you're learning to accomplish that task.

    in 24 Hours: Unfortunately, this is not enough, as the next section shows.

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
Researchers (Bloom (1985), Bryan & Harter (1899), Hayes (1989), Simmon & Chase (1973)) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. In another genre, the Beatles seemed to burst onto the scene with a string of #1 hits and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. But they had been playing small clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg since 1957, and while they had mass appeal early on, their first great critical success, Sgt. Peppers, was released in 1967. Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the idea, although he concentrates on 10,000 hours rather than 10 years.

It may be that 10,000 hours, not 10 years, is the magic number. Or it might be some other metric; Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) said "Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst." True expertise may take a lifetime: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) said "Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." And Chaucer (1340-1400) complained "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne." Hippocrates (c. 400BC) is known for the excerpt "ars longa, vita brevis", which is part of the longer quotation "Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile", which in English renders as "Life is short, [the] craft long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult." Of course, no single number can be the final answer: it doesn't seem reasonable to assume that each of programming, chess playing, checkers playing, and music playing could all require exactly the same amount of time to master, nor that all people will take exactly the same amount of time.
So You Want to be a Programmer

Here's my recipe for programming success:

    Get interested in programming, and do some because it is fun. Make sure that it keeps being enough fun so that you will be willing to put in your ten years/10,000 hours.

    Program. The best kind of learning is learning by doing. To put it more technically, "the maximal level of performance for individuals in a given domain is not attained automatically as a function of extended experience, but the level of performance can be increased even by highly experienced individuals as a result of deliberate efforts to improve." (p. 366) and "the most effective learning requires a well-defined task with an appropriate difficulty level for the particular individual, informative feedback, and opportunities for repetition and corrections of errors." (p. 20-21) The book Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life is an interesting reference for this viewpoint.

    Talk with other programmers; read other programs. This is more important than any book or training course.

    If you want, put in four years at a college (or more at a graduate school). This will give you access to some jobs that require credentials, and it will give you a deeper understanding of the field, but if you don't enjoy school, you can (with some dedication) get similar experience on your own or on the job. In any case, book learning alone won't be enough. "Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter" says Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary. One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub.

    Work on projects with other programmers. Be the best programmer on some projects; be the worst on some others. When you're the best, you get to test your abilities to lead a project, and to inspire others with your vision. When you're the worst, you learn what the masters do, and you learn what they don't like to do (because they make you do it for them).

    Work on projects after other programmers. Understand a program written by someone else. See what it takes to understand and fix it when the original programmers are not around. Think about how to design your programs to make it easier for those who will maintain them after you.

    Learn at least a half dozen programming languages. Include one language that emphasizes class abstractions (like Java or C++), one that emphasizes functional abstraction (like Lisp or ML or Haskell), one that supports syntactic abstraction (like Lisp), one that supports declarative specifications (like Prolog or C++ templates), and one that emphasizes parallelism (like Clojure or Go).

    Remember that there is a "computer" in "computer science". Know how long it takes your computer to execute an instruction, fetch a word from memory (with and without a cache miss), read consecutive words from disk, and seek to a new location on disk. (Answers here.)

    Get involved in a language standardization effort. It could be the ANSI C++ committee, or it could be deciding if your local coding style will have 2 or 4 space indentation levels. Either way, you learn about what other people like in a language, how deeply they feel so, and perhaps even a little about why they feel so.

    Have the good sense to get off the language standardization effort as quickly as possible.

With all that in mind, its questionable how far you can get just by book learning. Before my first child was born, I read all the How To books, and still felt like a clueless novice. 30 Months later, when my second child was due, did I go back to the books for a refresher? No. Instead, I relied on my personal experience, which turned out to be far more useful and reassuring to me than the thousands of pages written by experts.

Fred Brooks, in his essay No Silver Bullet identified a three-part plan for finding great software designers:

    Systematically identify top designers as early as possible.

    Assign a career mentor to be responsible for the development of the prospect and carefully keep a career file.

    Provide opportunities for growing designers to interact and stimulate each other.

This assumes that some people already have the qualities necessary for being a great designer; the job is to properly coax them along. Alan Perlis put it more succinctly: "Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught how not to. So it is with the great programmers". Perlis is saying that the greats have some internal quality that transcends their training. But where does the quality come from? Is it innate? Or do they develop it through diligence? As Auguste Gusteau (the fictional chef in Ratatouille) puts it, "anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great." I think of it more as willingness to devote a large portion of one's life to deliberative practice. But maybe fearless is a way to summarize that. Or, as Gusteau's critic, Anton Ego, says: "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

So go ahead and buy that Java/Ruby/Javascript/PHP book; you'll probably get some use out of it. But you won't change your life, or your real overall expertise as a programmer in 24 hours or 21 days. How about working hard to continually improve over 24 months? Well, now you're starting to get somewhere...

References

Bloom, Benjamin (ed.) Developing Talent in Young People, Ballantine, 1985.

Brooks, Fred, No Silver Bullets, IEEE Computer, vol. 20, no. 4, 1987, p. 10-19.

Bryan, W.L. & Harter, N. "Studies on the telegraphic language: The acquisition of a hierarchy of habits. Psychology Review, 1899, 8, 345-375

Hayes, John R., Complete Problem Solver Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989.

Chase, William G. & Simon, Herbert A. "Perception in Chess" Cognitive Psychology, 1973, 4, 55-81.

Lave, Jean, Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Answers
Approximate timing for various operations on a typical PC:

execute typical instruction    1/1,000,000,000 sec = 1 nanosec
fetch from L1 cache memory    0.5 nanosec
branch misprediction    5 nanosec
fetch from L2 cache memory    7 nanosec
Mutex lock/unlock    25 nanosec
fetch from main memory    100 nanosec
send 2K bytes over 1Gbps network    20,000 nanosec
read 1MB sequentially from memory    250,000 nanosec
fetch from new disk location (seek)    8,000,000 nanosec
read 1MB sequentially from disk    20,000,000 nanosec
send packet US to Europe and back    150 milliseconds = 150,000,000 nanosec
Appendix: Language Choice
Several people have asked what programming language they should learn first. There is no one answer, but consider these points:

    Use your friends. When asked "what operating system should I use, Windows, Unix, or Mac?", my answer is usually: "use whatever your friends use." The advantage you get from learning from your friends will offset any intrinsic difference between OS, or between programming languages. Also consider your future friends: the community of programmers that you will be a part of if you continue. Does your chosen language have a large growing community or a small dying one? Are there books, web sites, and online forums to get answers from? Do you like the people in those forums?
    Keep it simple. Programming languages such as C++ and Java are designed for professional development by large teams of experienced programmers who are concerned about the run-time efficiency of their code. As a result, these languages have complicated parts designed for these circumstances. You're concerned with learning to program. You don't need that complication. You want a language that was designed to be easy to learn and remember by a single new programmer.
    Play. Which way would you rather learn to play the piano: the normal, interactive way, in which you hear each note as soon as you hit a key, or "batch" mode, in which you only hear the notes after you finish a whole song? Clearly, interactive mode makes learning easier for the piano, and also for programming. Insist on a language with an interactive mode and use it.

Given these criteria, my recommendations for a first programming language would be Python or Scheme. Another choice is Javascript, not because it is perfectly well-designed for beginners, but because there are so many online tutorials for it, such as Khan Academy's tutorial. But your circumstances may vary, and there are other good choices. If your age is a single-digit, you might prefer Alice or Squeak or Blockly (older learners might also enjoy these). The important thing is that you choose and get started.
Appendix: Books and Other Resources
Several people have asked what books and web pages they should learn from. I repeat that "book learning alone won't be enough" but I can recommend the following:

    Scheme: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (Abelson & Sussman) is probably the best introduction to computer science, and it does teach programming as a way of understanding the computer science. You can see online videos of lectures on this book, as well as the complete text online. The book is challenging and will weed out some people who perhaps could be successful with another approach.
    Scheme: How to Design Programs (Felleisen et al.) is one of the best books on how to actually design programs in an elegant and functional way.
    Python: Python Programming: An Intro to CS (Zelle) is a good introduction using Python.
    Python: Several online tutorials are available at Python.org.
    Oz: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming (Van Roy & Haridi) is seen by some as the modern-day successor to Abelson & Sussman. It is a tour through the big ideas of programming, covering a wider range than Abelson & Sussman while being perhaps easier to read and follow. It uses a language, Oz, that is not widely known but serves as a basis for learning other languages. <

Notes
T. Capey points out that the Complete Problem Solver page on Amazon now has the "Teach Yourself Bengali in 21 days" and "Teach Yourself Grammar and Style" books under the "Customers who shopped for this item also shopped for these items" section. I guess that a large portion of the people who look at that book are coming from this page. Thanks to Ross Cohen for help with Hippocrates.

 

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