This is exactly what I do when some of my friends say "I wanna learn programming". The most important bit is to find out why, and specify a path so they can thr

This is exactly what I do when some of my friends say "I wanna learn programming". The most important bit is to find out why, and specify a path so they can thrive. Depending on their background (as in the article) and specially their objectives I would recommend quite different things. HTML+CSS is the basic for ~80% of my recommendations so far, but some times I've recommended straight Javascript, python or even C++ (Arduino). Heck, a couple of times I've recommended some people NOT to learn programming. Wanna start a business by next week? Test ideas with pre-made platforms and CMS. Read about startups, product-market fit, etc. If you are starting a business expect not to have time for learning programming from scratch. I wish I saw that last bit explained in the article and I feel it's a big omission. Some times NOT learning a tool/paradigm _is_ the right choice. If you just want to show a simple graph by tomorrow, don't learn D3.js, use any of the existing charting libraries.