[jtrout19]

A little back story right quick. I am 32 and I have tried to learn programming by self teaching and using the internet at several points in my life. I have never been successful at it, I think the majority of the reason why is because there is no structure when learning through videos and online stuff. Also, those site that have you build something then give you the code to make it work does not work for me because it is not enough to know that "this" does "that" I have to understand why "this" does "that". So I have been exploring my options and found a site called www.udemy.com You have to pay for the courses but that is no big deal. Anyone got any experience with Udemy?

[Mateusz]

Every programming course/book is the same, once you know one language then it's pretty much downhill.
It's always: variables, operators (=,+,-...etc), conditional statements usually "if/else", functions, for/while loops, then data structures which aggregate simpler data types (lists, dictionaries/hashes). Then you have writing,reading files standard I/O and libraries, done. Every book will look more or less that way.

You can try free Coursera which if you don't need certificate is free knowledge: https://www.coursera.org/learn/python

I suggest to start with Python as it is clean, requires you to write clean code, it's easy to test quickly. As IDE download free community version of https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/ or use Jupyter Notebook https://try.jupyter.org/. Once you know Python basics, it will be easier with everything, it's a good starting language.

[jtrout19]

Thats funny you recommended python. I started a course on Udemy, a free one, after i made this post. I took an accelerated C course at a technical I went to and I got a decent understanding of variables, operators, and conditional statements, The course touched on libraries and standard I/O. I could so really really simple things with it but when it came to more complex things i always had an issue putting everything that I had learned together.

[TheOtherCliff]

There are several good free online academies.  I can't remember the names off the top of my head.
Khan is one though.  https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming

Get the code compiling (check the wiki for setup instructions), then dive in.  I find that you need something you are interested in doing to really get going.

[jtrout19]

Well i am interested in alot of things but small electronics are my thing. I am the technical operations manager at a small electronics repair shop in indianapolis. I have jedi skills when it comes to soldering and board repair. We even do the multilayer stuff. I know one side of it really really well. I dont know the software/code side at all. So that is my motivation. I wanna have jedi coding skills as well.....lol

[Mateusz]

Thats awesome, but I agree with Cliff it might be more interesting to have small project. Could be Arduino or Nucleo board. For Nucleo I think really nice book is "Mastering STM32". It explains inner workings of chip, how to set up environment and many chip peripherals. Arduino is better starter though if you haven't programmed before. I actually ordered small Arduino because I wanted something very cheap and easy for quick project. I want to translate i2c signal from my mag to output it on serial combined with gps data so it looks like OPv9. But one can do anything when you code something that switches lights in pattern or plant watering system you really learn fast when you apply code and see it works the way you needed;)