One of my friends wants to learn how to code, and asks me where to start, and what language (PHP? ). I always tell them; well think of something you want to so

One of my friends wants to learn how to code, and asks me where to start, and what language (PHP? ). I always tell them; well think of something you want to solve first, smaller problem the better. Then google how to work out that problem. If they can't do that; (i.e. they do not make any attempt! ) , I won't invest anymore of my time because they clearly lack the mentality to do it. I started with PHP (3 back then) because I had built (copy paste amalgamation) a website, and I didn't want to maintain all these html files, so probably altavista'd something in the lines of "how to include other page into page html" . I know back then I was also messing with Newsdesk, which was CGI/Perl, and remember adding some fields to the whole thing so my buddy's could post their Warez uploads on there. I actually ended up with one of the biggest Warez sites in the scene at that time. I actually had mostly no idea what I was doing. And there was no Google back then. Altavista ruled the market. Anyway what I'm going to is: If you do not have this mindset, you will probably not make it as a programmer. And that's ok, because maybe you have different goals. Just make sure you understand what you want to do. There are a huge amount of musicians who probably never imagined being great or a rockstar, they just liked playing music and figured out how. Last note: if you're picking between for example "PHP" , "Python" , "Ruby" I would definitely start working with a framework, because it will help you start off the right way; using a design pattern and command line tools.