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Re:Ask HN: Best programming course for an absolute beginner? by EdPF on Friday September 04, 2020 @12:00PM (#24376143)
This question almost always needs further qualification, to determine what the goal is. Learning to program is different from preparing for a new career. You get the drift.

That said, for "pure" learning to program, I like the DrRacket IDE and the course book "How to Design Programs" ( http://htdp.org/ ) because it teaches problem solving with programming. And that's what it's about. Should give a newb a sense of whether this is something they want to spend their time doing.

The concept are transferable to other languages; the specific language skills not so much.

Re:Ask HN: Best programming course for an absolute beginner? by kharak on Friday September 04, 2020 @12:59PM (#24376694)
Lets say he'd like to explore programming first and take something usable for his day to day work. I thought about finding something with VBA, as he's doing a good amount of his work with office products, but Python might be suitable, too.