How to learn a computer language especially VBA

Hi,

I just thought I would post this question as I have spent the last week revising an Excel VBA course I did in 2006, and after a whisky to take my mind off things last night, now have a few questions on this subject:

I am generally interested in learning theory, whether this involves training a dog to sit, horse to trot etc. Clearly when we were at school, some of us were better at learning languages and others not. Some language learning took place through pictures i.e. this is an apple (to learn this in English) and once we had learnt what it was we would later learn the Spanish for apple being manzana.

Clearly, learning a computer language for a beginner is a far from simple exercise.

Looking through my notes the only hint I have really found as to a sequence of events is: Declare Variables, Initialise variables, Assign values to variables, Output Result. There are also other notes on Object Models.

Really, what I would like to say is a) is there a set of rules for these sequence of events ? b) is there a translation for all the sequence of events (much like you would have from Spanish to English)?

My understanding is that some programmers copy out reams of code from the internet without a real understading (ie. translation and understanding of sequence of events). If that is the case it must surely be a highly unrewarding excercise!

Are there any good sources of materials of this? From what I can see in bookshops most of the books are 500 pages long with long explanations for examples. Quite frankly most people would not have the time or concentration levels for this. Was wondering if there is anything that simplifies things and/or is interactive?

Thanks,


Tim