My ADD is bad today, I didn't read your whole post but I think/hope I got the general idea.  I recently decided that I and Tanner would learn how to program for XBox and Windows Phone.  I haven't started anything yet, but I do have all of the stuff needed to do it.  You are welcome to any of it (no idea if it's stuff normal people would have to purchase or not) I got from my MSDN account mostly.  I also have a pretty big shit pile of ebooks/pdf's to get started.  If you are interested let me know and I can share it with you.

That sounds absolutely ideal, cheers! I've heard a lot of good things about Lua.

Is the wiki/tutorials a decent way to learn the language or is there somewhere else that will give me a better grasp of fundamentals? I hate going through tutorials that will at some point just dump a block of code and say "copy and paste this" without explaining what any of it does.

Yeah, stick to the wiki and the tutorials linked therein.

Until you're done with them, obviously, then look elsewhere :Y

Also Love comes with a bunch of examples built in which is nice. You can have a look at their code and pull them apart and stuff.

Yeah I know a lot of people who swear by C#. I think if you can get your head round class based inheritance (which I was never able to do, prototype based makes so much more sense in my head) then it's pretty much perfect. Does all the tedious stuff for you and lets you get on with coding. 

Like, seriously? Prototype-based programming isn't even real inheritance </controversial>

Aye. Also I find it much easier to think in terms of verbs doing things to nouns (i.e. functions acting on data structures (from the outside)) than in terms of nouns containing methods to do things to themselves/other things.

And I like weakly typed languages.

I'm essentially just a terrible coder :Y

Realising that dynamic prototyped-based languages are vastly superior to strict static class-based languages doesn't make you a terrible coder.

Everyone I know who's good at coding tells me that it does :C

(except you (hug) )

I didn't say you weren't terrible. ;)

Most opponents to prototyping seem to be because it's unfamiliar and/or because they don't like/understand JavaScript. (And if it wasn't for JS most people would remain ignorant of the existence of it.)

Of course, if you're working in a decent language, you're not limited to one way or another, and can roll with either classes or prototypes depending on what is most appropriate for the task at hand.
(And if you're working with JavaScript... there's still class-based implementations for it.)

With regards static typing, lots of people like it because it lets them be stupid and gives a [false] sense of security when the compiler succeeds.

The same sort of people will use a 15-20 line namespaced XML file (accompanied by an even longer XSD schema) instead of just using a 1-2 line INI file.

I agree with DROO: learn Lua. It's a nice language, and it'll give you a good foundation to learn JavaScript later if you go that way, as it's sorta like a simplified version of it. Or at least a version without the terrible stuff.

Bonus (maybe): World of Warcraft addons are written in Lua.

And if you learn JavaScript, beware, there are many many sites that advocate terrible practices. Stick to the good parts and you'll be mostly fine, though. Also JavaScript does not belong inside any HTML tag except <script>.

Eww, World of Warcraft...

Any good resources for starting out with Lua? The Love2D wiki links to here and here, do those look promising, bearing in mind I'm starting with essentially no knowledge of basic programming languages?

Have you got a list of the ebooks? If you're still offering i wouldn't mind taking a gender...

I sure do, let me get a list for you.

This is what I have pertaining to programming. I also have hacking roomba stuff, Arduino stuff, Home Automation, and Raspberry Pi.  If any of those interest you I can take a shot of those too.

Any chance you could wing me the C++ for dummies 5th edition?

I've got the MagPi ezine (all free editions) which is pretty cool for Pi related projects.

Eyup I will as soon as I get to work. Do you want to pm me an address or I could just share it with you on G+ I think.

Sent you a PM...

Sent you a link!

Sent YOU a link. :)