Where do i start with learning basic programming?

Try Codeacademy.com It's a free site where you can learn the basics of many programming languages and you can test code in the browser so you get immediate feedback.

Nobody programs in Basic anymore, it went away with the old DOS operating system. Most people go with modern languages that support the Web like Java, Javascript, PHP and if you want to be taken seriously by the hip startup crowd - Rails and Python. The Basic interpreter also doesn't run on any modern operating system.

However if your VC guy insists, you can download DOSBox and Google around for a pirated copy of GWBasic. There's also a manual on the Web as well. It can be pretty fun making apps such as pong or emitting nostalgic rudimentary tones but I wouldn't use that as a starting point for your startup.

I meant Ruby not Rails (Rails is the track that the train runs on).

BASIC? Why stop there? What about COBOLScript?

Hi, I recommend you this post on Quora, about a 24 years old learning coding people :

http://www.quora.com/I-am-24-years-old-and-just-started-learning-coding-I-want-to-be-a-programmer-Am-I-too-late-in-the-game

It can give you some good advices to start and to keep motivation.

Regards

I went through the Startup Engineering course last year with about 100k other people. Only 5k of us successfully finished it up. It's a shame because the course itself is <strong>excellent</strong> and the teachers were very helpful. I'm expanding my knowledge still, but they definitely have an excellent foundation you can build upon and I loved how demanding it was for an online course. You'll probably love it as well!