What I want is to be able understand, attain a more intuitive comprehension, of concepts associated with other fields that I'm interested in, which I assume are important. As a simple example, take this comment by RobinZ. Not that I don't understand that simple statement. As I said, I already know the 'basics' of programming. I thoroughly understand it. Just so you get an idea.
In addition to reading up on all lesswrong.com sequences, I'm mainly into mathematics and physics right now. That's where I have the biggest deficits. I see my planned 'study' of programming to be more as practise of logical thinking and as a underlying matrix to grasp fields liked computer science and concepts as that of a 'Turing machine'.
And I do not agree that the effect is nil. I believe that programming is one of the foundations necessary to understand. I believe that there are 4 cornerstones underlying human comprehension. From there you can go everywhere: Mathematics, Physics, Linguistics and Programming (formal languages, calculation/data processing/computation, symbolic manipulation). The art of computer programming is closely related to the basics of all that is important, information.
Well, now that I understand your intentions a little bit better (and having read through the other comments), I seriously want to second the recommendation of Scheme.
Use DrScheme as environment (zero-hassle), go through SICP and HTDP. Algorithms are nice, Knuth's series and so, but it may be more than you are asking. Project Euler is a website where you can find some inspirations for problems you may want to solve. Scheme as a language has the advantages that you will not need time to wrap your head around ugly syntax (most languages, except for Lua, maybe...
We've had these for a year, I'm sure we all know what to do by now.
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