Look, i have been coding and building stuff since 2008. I have also taught people how to code. One thing i can tell you (in my experience) is that people are

1) attracted to this career path (software development) primarily because of financial rewards and not because of passion. Much of the talk i have
heard is (which programming language will make me money very fast?). This attitude is bad as most often than not, you will be half-baked in the essentials of the art of programming/software development (NOTE: software development isn't programming as the former involved a whole lot more than the latter). I hope you have the passion. If you do i bet you that the financial rewards will come!

2) There is a big difference between programming and being skillful in a particular programming language (Java, PHP, C#.NET e.t.c). Programming involves a very good understanding of how 3 things work together to act on computer instructions.
1) Processor Chipsets
2) Memory
3) OS

For instance, when i talk about "variable scoping" or "memory leaks". These are not things that are taught extensively by any programming language, but are used by most if not all programming languages.This is the reason why one person can learn as many as 20 computer languages
without getting confused. Why? because at the heart of developing (creation), running (giving life to programming code so it works) any software, you find the 3 things i listed above being part of the whole process. "variable scoping" have to do with execution stacks created in the RAM monitored by (a CPU component called) the stack pointer and "memory leaks" have to do with RAM memory used to store variables and not reclaimed or emptied for reuse. These things i have just talked about are really important to understand to become a really good programmer. I am not asking you to go into Embeded Systems programming but i am saying you grasp the basics of these component processes.

Also, you need to know stuff like flow of control, data structures and algorithms (data strutures: ARRAYS, TREES, B-TREES, BINARY HEAPS, LINKED LISTS, QUEUES, DEQUEUES, STACKS) and algorithms (Levensthien distance, binary search, backtracking, depth-first search). Knowing these things helps you get ahead when you start learning any language. For me, i will advise you start with Java It will discipline you on certain basics and allow you fuller understanding of things in general

You can find more here on http://blog.coolandcodes.com and also follow up here @coolandcodes or @chritz_n

You could also learn free of charge with http://blog.coolandcodes.com with our numerous resources , also follow @coolandcodes to get the latest and you could also follow me @isocroft

To learn as well with the folks you will be studying with, you can also use http://blog.coolandcodes.com as it contains resources which you can use to study. My name is Patrick I***** and i am an experienced Web developer stack: (NodeJS, PHP, C#, C++, Java, JavaScript) Thanks