Get something you want to program. Get a reference. Program.

I am actually happy that someone told me pretty much this. It took a while until I realized how true this was. Just get something you want to do and keep that in mind when reading the reference. I know most people will start making tons of mistakes and writing really crappy code, but that's exactly what learning is about. Starting out with nothing and getting better. One learns from mistakes. Somehow people tend to forget this. Lots of people seem to be embarrassed making a mistake, causing them to don't do anything at all or not giving in that they are making mistakes. One can't learn that way.

I think the article sums it up pretty well and every programmer I know did it that way, well other than learning programming in school, which I myself don't really consider "learning to program", because I never met any person that actually learned programming ins school, meaning if they did they didn't ever program again.