The Secret to Learning How to Program is…

…  knowing where to look. This is not really a secret. The thing is that you won’t get anywhere if you don’t know your way around a system or programming language. Instead of trying to learn everything as you go along, buy a couple of books instead. For example, if you want to learn how to develop web apps with Ruby on Rails, get something on Ruby, Rails, JavaScript (affiliate links), and maybe Relational Databases. Read one book a week. Within a month, you’ll know where to look. And that’s all you need to know.