How did you start learning to program? I've been teaching myself where ever I can and changed my major, but I feel like I could be learning more in less time. Any tips?

Depends on what you wanna learn. I suggest books like 'the pragmatic programmer' for real world advice, hackerrank.com for algorithm practice and opensource contributions to see other coding styles

@aceface just read that Andy Hunt the author of PP will be the first featured guest on the new devRant podcast series.

Try to have a project to work through and learn.

I agree pick a project and just roll with the punches, alternatively if you can find a project that has already been done you can offer to fix the bugs. You'll curse a lot, but you'll learn a lot too

Check out Laracasts. Some great video tutorials on there. Mainly php but useful programming principles too!

Have you tried online courses such as coursera? I can't tell for sure as I haven't followed them myself but I think they have some good quality courses there.

the best way to learn is by doing. so pick a project and do it. try not to do anything complicated at the start so you don't get discouraged when you are stuck.

@Jumpshot44 wait hold everything there's a devRant podcast series? Where can I find this magical beast?

A little bit late, but here is my answer:
I choose a language I'm interested in, I look for online tutorials and read a few pages from each, to determine which one hands me the information in a better way.

Once I have a basic understanding of the standard libraries, I choose a project and do it, using whatever libraries I find online.

Practice makes perfect, if you ask me.

A project seemed like the best way to go so that's what I ended up doing actually :)