I need to learn a new skill. Computer re-lated. How did you learn programming?

Well, I'm not sure what options you have available to you, but I am currently in college taking a programming course. (MatLab) I have the book, which clues me in to a lot of tips and tricks that would have taken me a while to figure out on my own, but I would say that the best way to learn is to immerse yourself in the software. Use it as much as possible, and try to apply it to whatever you are doing. For example, I was working on a physics problem, and did not have my graphing calculator with me, so I looked up graphing, and learned how to graph functions before we even got to that section in class. A lot of times, however, computer languages are really picky, and don't understand something just because you typed it wrong, which is why it helps to have a book and to be able to look it up.

Way back when the only PCs available where the second hand 8086 IBMs that companies were selling off (£5,500 UK new, selling for £50.00 as the new 286 machines were out) there was no software unless you had a few thousands to spend, I bought the 8086 programming book. I read it, then started writing programs using the DOS debug program in pure machine code. There was no such thing as Windows. Within 3 days I had a program that could find the details of documents issued within the last 18 months, it could find the correct book issue, and the number of the appropriate document out of thousands from a car registration within 15 minutes. People got exited, previously it took between 3 to 5 days to go through all the books to find it. After 1 week I had people using my programs to invoice. since then I have programmed on every type of machine, and every operating system going, including some very short lived odd ones. Each time by reading the book. Now I only do some data oriented web coding (this is NOT programming) using html, php, mysql and javascript, again from the book, and some minor Unix type programming on Linux servers. With no outside help it is hard, but forces you to think for yourself.

http://www.amazon.com/Ivor-Hortons-Beginning-Visua...

This is not how I learned programming but it looks a good modern book for getting started.