The best part about programming, or any other software related project, is you can just install the free software and start tooling around with it. When you mess something up (when, not if) you simply reinstall or wipe the project and start over, or change a few bits and bytes of data, and try it again.
The problem I had when diving into programming was it was a lot of redundancy. I like learning the theory of how something works, not the actual application of it. So once I learned how to make a script or snippet fire, I didn't want to put it in 50 other places in the application, even if it only meant copying and pasting. Even when VB auto-completes a lot of functions for you.
I would say start with the most powerful tool on the internet... Google. There are many free tutorials available for programing in just about any language. Be prepared to stare at code for hours, and miss a "{" or ";" every once in a while, making your whole application not work.
If you are getting started in programming to help you with your EQemu ventures, I would say use C# simply because you are fresh, and don't have bad habbits to unlearn, and C# is the newest, and (kind of) easiest (you will see what I mean if you dabble in a few of them, each has it's drawbacks) out of the languages. C# also has a very nice database integration setup, even if you are using the MySQL ODBC driver (Microsoft likes to only make their programming apps work with MS SQL server).
Now that Sun and MySQL are joining together, hopefully there will be more resources poured into ease of use. Sun is pretty good at making applications and infrastructure work seamlessly, with almost no effort on behalf of the end user.
LOL that sounded like a commercial for Sun Microsystems... anyhow, I wish you luck on your journey for knowledge, and you are picking the right way to do it in my opinion... working on a game emulator and making it work will give you something with fun results you can play with, rather than a utility that someone is going to use, and you never see the results of your work.
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