Learning to program stuff?

Well, duh, what else is there to do during high school math classes other than programming your TI-83?

First of all, I'm going to start by saying that I don't necessarily believe that the language you choose really matters (well, there ARE exceptions). The first reason is that most modern languages look and feel fairly similar. There are exceptions, like Perl and Lisp, but in most cases you'll be able to learn a new language relatively quickly after you've learned one. The second is that one of the goal at first isn't so much to learn the language, but to learn how to solve problems. The process is similar for all language since they are all, after all, equivalent. The third reason is that you also want to get a feel for what it means to write good, elegant, efficient code, and that will stay with you no matter what language you learn. For example, I had to learn Fortran for a course this semester. Without having ever really done any Fortran before, I already had a fairly good idea what to do and what not to do when coding, from my previous experience.

With that said, there are languages you should avoid. Anything with BASIC in the name, for one (so from now on BASIC==VB,QBasic,etc). BlueMikey puts it better than I can. Well, I guess it's not entirely true, a little BASIC won't hurt you, as long as you move away as soon as you've written anything with more than 50 lines of code. Even that might be too much. The danger is that if you start trying to write, say, a program to solve differential equations with a Runge-Kutta method, trying to make the whole thing interactive so that the user can type the equation in, then you'll spend months trying to make something work, and the simple, but inefficient and unstructured BASIC syntax will stick with you whether you like it or not. Once you'll get to C, or whatever other language you choose, you'll have a really hard time getting used to a more structured syntax, and it's likely you'll never be able to get used to it completely.

Though frankly, if you're going as far as doing what I said in BASIC, you're a masochist, and you might as well write the whole thing in COBOL. This way you'll have experience when a major bank needs to modify their financial system that dates back from 1971, and realize that the only other person that knows COBOL in the province (or state) is senile. They pay real good, actually, if what I've heard is true.

Well, that aside, the only other advice I can give you is this: program. You can read all you want, but that won't make you capable of programming. You might think you know how to program since you can understand all the examples in your book, but as soon as you'll be faced with coding something more complicated than "Hello World", you'll realize that you can't program. If you do practice, the first thing you'll notice is, you'll make less and less syntax errors that keep your programs from even compiling (if you're in C/C++, that means less missing ";" at the end of your lines, then less time spent asking yourself if you need a ";" after a while loop, then...). Then you'll start catching bugs before you've even compiled your program (in C/C++, you WILL use = instead of == for a condition at least once, and spend quite some time looking for the bug. Then you'll never forget again). Eventually you'll really know the syntax, but most importantly, you'll learn how to write good code, and you'll develop your own style.

Jam it back in, in the dark.