Learning to program stuff?

Ok, so I want to learn how to code stuff and to have expansion in general for other platforms of codeness, i.e. I could learn X code for Y application given some time, i.e. programming widgets or whatnot.



What I see logically is, learning an easy language first, so I can actually get the fundamentals for programming nuances behind me, then ramping up to something a bit more "meaty".

How does one go about generally becoming proficient like this? Learning C++ and moving onto others? Learning, like....PHP? Python? Java?

Any "how to think and do like a programmer" tutorials or books?

Anyone wanna suggest me any other suitable methods, especially how they learned to code?

(btw mods, I have no clue where to put this so just put it wherever if it needs to go there)

Jam it back in, in the dark.