Links

So many pages to read, so little time...

General

• Joel Spolsky's excellent site Joel on Software has a good archive of articles.
• The blog Code Simplicity often has some good ideas.
• The blog Coding Horror is diverse and worth a read.
• For a general purpose text editor that understands pretty much every programming language (except Prolog), check out: Notepad++.

Java

The most popular programming language in the world (according to the TIOBE Index).

• The Oracle tutorials for Java - everything from the basics to specialist information.
• The download section for the various JDKs available.
• The home of the NetBeans IDE - Oracle's own tool, it has a nicer GUI builder, and is my preferred IDE.
• The home of the Eclipse IDE - not so good for GUI work, but integrates well with GIT.
• Google's coding standards for Java. Everyone should have some coding standards!

JavaScript

The only choice for client-side web programming (and tenth most popular language in the world).

General

• Douglas Crockford's very informative JavaScript site and his brilliantly useful JSLint and JSMin utilities.
• The full text of version 5.1 of the ECMAScript specification, should you feel the need.

Object-Orientation

• Mozilla's Introduction to Object-Oriented JavaScript.
• sitepoint's JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming Part 1.
• sitepoint's JavaScript Object-Oriented Programming Part 2.

Prolog

The fortysixth most popular programming language in the world. But still my favourite.

• The home page for SWI-Prolog - an excellent, free multiplatform Prolog system.
• Uwe Lesta's interface between SWI-Prolog and .NET.

C#

Microsoft's version of Java for Windows (and sixth most popular language in the world).

• The home of VisualStudio. There are free versions called VisualStudio Express - make sure you get the correct version for your intended platform.
• API documentation generator from Doxygen.

Learning to Code

I suggest you start with Scott Hanselman's blog post A Coder, a Programmer, a Hacker, a Developer, and a Computer Scientist Walk into a Venn Diagram. Then read Peter Norvig's classic article Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years :-)

Actually, there are a number of good sites for learning programming from scratch:

• Learn Java Online has a decent online interactive system to teach the basics of Java.
• The Tutorials Point site has a range of materials on a variety of languages including:
  • Java Tutorial
  • C# Tutorial
  • JavaScript Tutorial
• The Home & Learn site has a collection of tutorials on a similar range of languages:
  • Java for Complete Beginners
  • C# .NET for Beginners
  • JavaScript for the Beginner
• The Learn Prolog Now! site has good beginners' introduction.
• The SWI-Prolog site has a good range of tutorials.
• The Code Academy has some good material for JavaScript.