This is a slightly edited response I recently wrote to someone who asked how to learn skills that would be useful at a hackathon. It's my usual response when someone asks how to get started programming.
You should start by approaching the problem from a different perspective. You should be thinking "I want to build X. Now what do I need to learn to build that?" not "I want to learn to build stuff. What can I learn?"
Last weekend I created Nemesis, a 3D First-Person Shooting game completely in the browser using WebGL with Three.js. I'm really excited that this is possible in the browser and that I was able to do it with no prior WebGL or Three.js experience in 23 hours for the AngelHack hackathon. This post is intended to explain the code so that other people can do the same.
A lot of people think about programming as some huge, difficult discipline that you sit down and learn like you would learn History or Math. I think I'll learn how to code today, one might say, and I've really been looking forward to that quantum physics class.
Here's the thing: almost no one learns how to code in a classroom, by hearing about it or by reading about it. People learn how to code by doing it, like driving a car. But most people learn how to drive a car because it gets them from Point A to Point B, not because driving is fun. Lots of people drive for fun, but hundreds of millions of people slog through traffic on their way to work every day.
Isaac is a student with a passion for technology, entrepreneurship, and design. He also pursues writing, politics, and music. But mostly he builds things.