New to programming- Where to start?

I've been dealing with PC for about 8 years or so and had several of the early computers in the 80's (Apple ][e, Franklin1000, Commodore64,etc.) so I know a bit about PC's. I 'left the scene' in the late 80's thru early 90's. Anyway- I'm interested in learning programming/scripting. I used to program BASIC and assembly for the old 6502 (Apple2e) CPU and I was pretty good at it. Programming now is a total different plane of existence. I stumbled across Yahoo widgets (I posted about this in the Software forum) and, with their engine and tools, I thought it would be a good intro to Java or XML. I was wrong. The tools provided didn't work; I'm not the only person who had problems with the Yahoo provided tools. What I'm getting at here is: what's a good way to get into programming? Is there a difference between 'scripting' and 'programming'? What's a good general language to start with for a beginner? I've read some books and they're generally written so poorly that they're hard to follow and understand. Most also assume that I'm familiar with the terms used and jargon or that I already know another language. SO- how does a fairly bright guy with a good knowledge of PC workings (both hardware and software/Windows) get started in this realm w/o getting discouraged? I've seen the '...For Dummies' type books and they seem to be pretty clearly written. Any help, ideas, suggestions, websites, links, downloads, etc. will be GREATLY appreciated.
THANX!

hopperdave2000

 

If you just looking to get some jobs done quick VBscripting is nice, but for my programming I got VB6 while attending Tech School and it is a good way to start. Being VB6 is old now (.Net, ect) books are easy to come by & cheap. Plus a wealth of free code on the net to learn from.. just like learning Commodore BASIC from Compute! & RUN magazines.

There is a program that is VB6 like and easier called InstantEXE.. has a lot of functions but not a lot of documentation.

I was like you a VIC-20 user, in school Apples, then eventually a PDP1134 where I crafted my BASIC, then learned CoBOL,Fortran, & Pascal. No GUIs there...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vb/download/