I can understand what you're saying. If you've programmed with Visual Basic and assembly you're already familiar with most of the concepts. I would suggest look

I can understand what you're saying. If you've programmed with Visual Basic and assembly you're already familiar with most of the concepts. I would suggest looking at the website learnxinyminutes.com. It will give you an overview of current languages. As you haven't been programming for along time I would suggest picking up a language that is easy to setup. I would recommend perl, after a short introduction you can download and install every module you like from cpan.org with a single command and start solving puzzles. Coming from Visual Basic and assembly I think you will struggle with object orientation and functional programming at first. My advice get a Linux machine or vm, install cpanm. Have a look at perl at learnxinyminutes and start coding. You could write a script with WWW::Mechanize that scrapes news from HN. BTW I am currently fascinated by win32 assembly programming and reverse engineering. Your old-school knowledge is still valuable. Continue reading HN and coding fun projects. You'll catch up in no time.