Hi, I need your advice!
I'd like to learn to program from scratch by reading the book "Programming from the Ground Up" and then moving onto C++, Java, and a few other programming languages (maybe Lisp, Perl, etc). My goal, in a nutshell, is to learn many different programming languages in a span of 10 years, invent something, and make millions of dollars (all in that order). How realistic am I being?
It will only work if you have something worth inventing. Programming would be more of a means to help make your idea a reality. Good luck regardless and buy me a steak dinner if my words inspire you to make millions.
Just invent something, why waste ten years on languages you'll probably never use.
The first one has little or nothing to do with the last two. Very few programmers will invent anything of consequence and very few will get rich by programming. Thinking that they are connected may be the result of a naive understanding of how some of the successful companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google came about and how difficult it is to actually do that. Thousands of people have ideas and try to implement them. A few of them are good, original ideas; they manage to get some funding and become interesting enough that one of the big companies buys them out (and then they do get rich). The odds are probably worse than walking into a Casino or going to the Track and hoping to come out rich. None-the-less, people keep doing all of those and a few do come out as winners so if you don't mind the odds then go for it.
Being good at programming is not about how many languages you know, it's about being able to design efficient algorithms, languages are only tools.
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