For an introduction to programming i'd recommend
http://eloquentjavascript.net/ (the complete book as .zip is only about 1.5MiB, that should be no problem even for slow connections
) it is a great book, starting with the absolute basics, and building progressively with exercises and lots of code-samples.
JavaScript is an awesome language (btw. it is not really related to Java! see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#JavaScript_and_Java ) and you won't regret learning it. While Python is also a nice choice for a first language, JavaScript has the advantage that you don't need to Install any extra software to start playing around, a modern browser (i'd recommend Chrome, and Firefox is also fine) and a texteditor is all you need. Assuming you are on Windows, you can just use 'notepad.exe' although a more capable texteditor makes it more comfortable (
http://notepadplusplus.org/ is really great). For your first steps
http://jsfiddle.net is a great tool (also made with JavaScript btw). I made a
little example For the simplest hello world program, copy the following into your browser's addressbar and press enter
javascript:alert("hello, world!")
Most browsers provide a console (in Chrome simply press Ctrl+Shift+J) where you can type JavaScript commands and immediately see their result (and if you've learned a bit, you will be able to interact with and modify the page you currently are on live, how cool is that?
not hard to guess what
document.body.style.background='black' would do, for example
)
Whatever you decide to do, always stay curious, e.g. if you see a cool effect on a website, you can view the source (Ctrl+U in Chrome) and learn from it. Always play around, playing around is one of the best methods to learn things, never just read tutorials, always try stuff alongside!
If you are curious about different languages, you can play with some popular ones directly in your browser in a so called '
Read-Eval-Print-Loop' on
http://repl.it to quickly try things without the need to install anything.
Some helpful links:
For 3d modelling, check out
http://www.blender.org/, in my experience it is at least as powerfull as the commercial programs that cost a lot (if you want to use them legally...
) and it is an open source project, so in case you're interested (and learn quite a bit first) you can check it's sourcecode and see how it does things (who knows, you might be able to even contribute your own improvement one day
. There are lots of great tutorials available for free on the web, though the best ones are on youtube, so if you have trouble streaming it can be a bit harder to find something.
The most important thing is: just do it, try stuff, if things don't work, google is your friend, and in case that doesn't get you anywhere... there's this amazing places called forums