Questions about languages

[ryokimball]

I'm playing with programming ideas. The only experience I have is occasional reading and I one picked up on BASIC programming in fifth grade (just played with it, made a calculator and some other BASIC toys). Anyways, I think I am going to start with Java, because it's portable, I have half a dozen left over books from my dad on it, and I've heard it called a beginner's language more than once (although I don't like the whole middle man idea and such...). I just thought I'd ask around and see if there were any ideas or tips for getting started (even in other languages which might be advised for me to get into).
Also, what's the difference between Java and J++? And are the windows programming books I have (especially for visual J++) relatively useless? I mean, I am willing to work in Windows, but I definitely don't want to do anything just for Windows....
And aside from Java, I have some C/C++ books that I have read (never practiced, though --nothing stuck, just theory and, hopefully, understanding...). Is there any other languages that could easily be learned with only online resources? (I'm a vulture; used, free books only)

[gerard4143]

Try python its free. Plus free doc and tutorials, is protable and easy to learn

[coopstah13]

I believe J++ is for Microsoft Visual Studio to program java, just the ide/compiler.

Java is pretty much platform independent.
Sun has pretty good tutorials online for learning java I believe.
You should be able to find plenty of online tutorials for C/C++ as well.

I always recommend java, good to use, will teach you a lot of important programming concepts all around by learning it and couple that with the platform independent aspect to make it even more appealing. Lots of enterprise applications and even smaller non-enterprise apps are written in java these days, and the number of companies using primarily java is growing.

[otama71]

If you are interested in web-based tutorials, have a look here:

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials