Comment Programming is not about the language... (Score 1) 312
To learn programming, pick a problem to solve, then pick a language you'd like to solve it with. Learning programming has nothing to do with the language itself - its just a tool that implements a set of contructs you use to tell a computer what to do. Programming is the art of telling the computer what to do. To clarify, building a house has nothing to do with a hammer, but you use a hammer to build a house, or maybe you use a nail gun. If its a steel stud house, you don't use a hammer, you get a screw gun. So choosing a language is about choosing the right tool for the problem you are trying to solve.
Learning C on your own can be daunting - wouldn't recommend it, but have at it if thats what you want to learn. I'd learn on a Mac or on Linux, but not Windows, unless you are writing a Windows program. Swift is a cool language, but is only useful on iOS or Mac (and more recently, server-side development with certain frameworks.)
So, I would choose the problem you want to solve, do some research on the best tool to solve that problem, and go from there.