Comment Get rid of the poorly designed environments. (Score 2) 306
Or find a better one. I recommend you try "How to Design Programs", an intro to Scheme, which, despite its syntax, is a very decently designed language. You can buy the book for money, or download it for free. (there's two versions. The newer one is more fun. The older one is more finished.) Racket is the implementation that's designed to work with it, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. For free.
The book is about program design, not about piecing together fragments found on the web.
The Racket mailing list is a place where students can actually ask questions and often get the language designers and implementers to answer even trivial questions.
Try it. It won't take long, and you will learn.
To the extent you are already experienced, you will find the beginning a bit tedious. So skim through until you reach your level.
-- hendrik