What is the best way to into programming?

Preferably while learning relevant languages, but not necessarily.

PHP

Yeah, I said it.  Yadda yadda fractal of bad design blah blah suck my cock whores.

PHP is easy enough to figure out for non-programmers and you can build up to bigger and more complex projects.  PHP has a pretty good user community, so just google what you want and copy/paste.  It's not perfect, but you'll actually get shit done instead of doing some Project Euler ego-masturbation exercise.