Chris Pine's book/website Learn to Program already has the #1 spot on google for "Learn to program", but I want to just confirm to anyone who reads this that this website really is the place to start if you want to begin learning to program.

I wish I could go back about 7 years and find this website.. I would be unstoppable today. When I was first learning about the web I never really had anyone to tell me where to start for a lot of things. I had a few people that told me where to start with some things and in those things I excelled (photography, HTML/CSS, Flash, Photoshop); I didn't have anyone to tell me where to start for programming though.

After years of struggling with understanding programming and just learning more here and there by example I know I can say I really know how to program, but it really took me a long time to get to where I am. I feel like many other people who are "programmers" are like me though in that they never got a good solid start on programming fundamentals. I'm guessing this is over 80% of the amateur programming population and over 50% of professional programmers.

Turns out this is a full life-lesson in that you should (almost) always start from the beginning. So if you want to learn to program, start here.