Programming your own games...

Nowadays you don't 'need' to be able to program to make your own computer games, there is software available that will allow you to make make small and simple games with only a small learning curve.  If you want to take your 'hobby' to the next level though, you are going to have to learn a programming language. 

A few things to consider... 

There are numerous programming languages out there to choose from, but before you pick one i suggest you think about what type of applications you will mainly be writing, what your target platform will be...ie Windows, Linux, Mac, XBox, etc.. do you want to target more than one platform, are your applications going to be web based?  These are all things that need to be considered before you decide on your choice of language. 'Most' professional/ retail games are written in C or C++, C was the main language of game programmers but has (mostly)been replaced by C++. Both the C and C++ languages are platform independent, they are fast and versatile. They are also however considered by many people to be harder than other languages to learn. 

Languages.  

BASIC. (Visual Basic)

BASIC is a language that is easier to learn but is simply not fast enough for professional games, it is however a good place to start to grasp the concepts of programming. In the eighties and nineties there were many versions of BASIC floating around,  BBC BASIC was used in many UK schools to teach programming techniques. The BASIC language(s) have evolved a lot over the years, and the latest version from Microsoft 'Visual Basic 2008', is much more complex and powerful and has a higher learning curve than its earlier counterparts, and is essentially a  different language. It can be used for simple 'hobbyist' games, but is still not fast enough for modern retail games.

C# ( Pronounced C Sharp)

C# is a reasonably new general purpose propriety language from Microsoft, it is one of the .Net languages  along with Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual J#, to name the main/most widely used ones. C# has been used by many hobbyist game programmers with great success. Its only slightly harder to learn than Visual Basic and is a great language for rapidly developing programs. Although it hasn't been adopted by the mainstream/professional game studios to write their titles with, it has gained popularity with some studios who use it to develop their 'tools'. C# can be used to write code for the XBox as well as Windows.

Java

Java has been around for several years now (since the early 1990's) and is an OOP ( 'Object Oriented Programming') language. It  was designed to be  platform independent and its syntax is similar to that of C++. Java has been a very successful language and its code can been found all over the place being used for all manner of things, it quickly became popular for server side/web based applications.  There are several books on game programming with Java, along  with many internet tutorials on the subject.

C and C++

C was developed in the early 1970's for use with UNIX system mainframe computers, it was designed to be a general purpose, platform independent, procedural  language, with high level constructs but still allowed low level access. C quickly gained popularity and In the 1980's and 1990's  was the main language for professional game developers. In the mid 1980's a man named Bjarne Stroustrup released a new language based on the C language that he had been working on since circa 1979, it retained nearly all of C for backward compatibility and added new keywords and features, he called this language C++. The learning curve for C++ is a rather steep one, but once mastered it is a very powerful and flexible language that allows multi paradigm programming. 

It was once thought that to learn C++, you should first learn C,  but this is now considered a bad idea.  Many C programmers had trouble making the change from C to C++,  increasing the reputation of C++ as being hard to learn, and it was a long time before C++ replaced C as the favourite language for game development.  Now, to get a job in the game industry as a game programmer, being proficient in C++ is a must. 

There are many good books on learning C and C++, and game programming with C and C++, as well as a huge amount of online information and tutorials. I have listed some of what i consider to be the best books for learning C++ on the   Book List. page. These books are ones that worked well for me, remember that different people have different ways and techniques  of learning, what works well for one person may not for another.