The Microsoft Channel 9 site has a video course on learning to program in C# or VB. Aimed at the complete beginner to programming, it goes from the absolute start to a pretty advanced level in 24 episodes.

C# is a good language to learn for a beginner because it has features that other mainstream languages don't. It is a well designed, modern, strongly typed, object oriented language and if you learn how to program using it then you will be able to transfer the skill quite easily to Java, C++ or just about any language that takes the same approach - and the only big important exception that does things differently being JavaScript.

The problem of getting started, for a complete beginner, is a mixture of identifying and learning the concepts that you need to program in any language and seeing your way through the commas and semicolons.

The 24 videos that are available on Channel 9 take you from your first program using C# Express - which is of course a readily obtainable free resource  - to advanced things like using LINQ and collections. Most of the videos are about 20 minutes long so you do need to allocate plenty of time to watch them and you do need to be prepared to actively engage in programming as you proceed with the course.

The videos are not the "best of all possible" but they are pretty good and being free you can try them out without worrying about finishing the course. If you like learning things from video then this could be for you - or for someone you know who requests advice about how to learn to program.

You can watch the first two videos here (Silverlight needed):

Series Introduction 01

Creating Your First C# Program 02

If you like the first two, then the rest of the series can be viewed at: C# Fundamentals: Development for Absolute Beginners

There is also a Visual Basic version of the course but my advice would be to learn C#. Visual Basic isn't any easier to learn and it isn't used as much as C#.

Visual Basic Development for Absolute Beginners

Here is a helpful resource for finding programming classes.

Recommended Book

Beginning C# Object-Oriented Programming (Review)

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