Everything teknomage1 says, but a bit more elaborated, my take on it would be to get a feel for many programming languages, so you can decide on the best language to write your program in.
If I were to create a controling program for the space shutle, I would rather use ADA or Emerald than C, because those programming languages are build uppon the idear that everything is an object of its own with an assigned semaphor (as described in
chapter 6 in
Operating System Concepts) to ensure that not two instructions will try to address the same critical section at the same time.
The ease of producing this security is way better in those programming languages than you could ever do in C, but if you only knew C, you'd probably counterweigh the trouble of learning a new language against going through the hassle of implementing it in C.
I guess what I'm trying to describe here, is written in
chapter 9 of the book
Designing Object-Oriented Software
I know, at this point you're looking at the massive task of lerning how to program, and here I am throwing even more information your way, that just seems to make the getting startet task seem even more insurmountable.
Here you are thinking
- why can't I just get started?
- what do I need all these information for?
- I know what my program should do, why can't I just get it done?
- etc. you know what I'm talking about..
In order to get a good start on your then decided project,
chapter 9 of
Software Engineering by Roger S Pressman, or perhaps
Software Engineering by Ian Sommerville (here it's described in chapter 12) might be a good read.
What I'm trying to say with all this babling, is that when dealing with starting a project of your own, you need to get a well thought scalable design, because once your project starts to take off, a poor design from the beginning will eventualy make it hard to implement user requests.
Or I could just be blowing steam here, since it's your project and first and foremost it should just suit your current needs.. But they can change aswell...
Not that I'm saying "go buy these books" since I found them of no use the first time I read them, but after a few read through they begin to make sence.