Everyone can benefit from basic programming skills–and after you start, you just might want to go a whole lot further.

Author Steven Foote taught himself to program, figuring out the best ways to overcome every obstacle. Now a professional web developer, he’ll help you follow in his footsteps. He teaches concepts you can use with any modern programming language, whether you want to program computers, smartphones, tablets, or even robots.

Learning to Program will help you build a solid foundation in programming that can prepare you to achieve just about any programming goal. Whether you want to become a professional software programmer, or you want to learn how to more effectively communicate with programmers, or you are just curious about how programming works, this book is a great first step in helping to get you there.

Learning to Program will help you get started even if you aren’t sure where to begin.

•  Learn how to simplify and automate many programming tasks

•  Handle different types of data in your programs

•  Use regular expressions to find and work with patterns

•  Write programs that can decide what to do, and when to do it

•  Use functions to write clean, well-organized code

•  Create programs others can easily understand and improve

•  Test and debug software to make it reliable

•  Work as part of a programming team

•  Learn the next steps to take to build a lifetime of programming skills

Steven Foote is a web developer at LinkedIn. A self-taught programmer who loves technology, especially the Web, he has a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Accountancy from Brigham Young University. While working on his Master’s degree, he built all aspects of two AJAX-y web applications, from visual design to server and database maintenance, and everything in between.