New to programming. My gameplan. Advice?

Hi everyone,

I am brand spanking new to programming having never done anything like it before and am looking for sage advice. To give you an idea of where I am at, I had a roomate in college who was a CS major that, as a joke, installed linux on my computer. I had it that way for about a month and actually got to sort of liking it, but then the hardware broke so I bought a new computer and slapped windows on it. Years later, I have now switched to macs and can remember only how to change directories (cd) and list the files in directories (ls) in the unix shell. That is all the "unlayman" computer knowledge that I have.

Now I want to program mostly as a hobby, but I can see it benefiting me *greatly* at work. My goals in programming are as follows:

1) Get a solid foundation in programming to leave my options open once I start getting into it.

2) to learn to proficiently use R for statistical analyses and whatever else it is capable of doing (I'm a biologist by day and attempting to delve into mathematical ecology. R is all the rage at work, everyone uses it and I feel it is my duty to learn it).

3) Having more power around my machine (mac os x) - meaning customizing and general usage.

4) Eventually have a grand old time writing programs for macs and maybe iphones purely for fun, maybe games, maybe just any ol' program.

So, my thoughts to accomplish these goals and the order I plan on doing them are as follows:

1) Learn C while learning programming theory.

2) While learning C, also learn R. I plan to do this by going through a statistics book (probably Zar) and doing all the examples in R.

3) Then learn to use Unix Shells again, as well as Python and applescript for more power around my machine.

4) Finally learn objective-C to start programming for my mac.

My questions to you are these. What do you think? Is this a good way to get to where I'm going? Any advice and/or links to helpful resources (especially free but quality books that I need to pay for would be good too)? How long do you think each task will take (in work hours)? Anything else you can think of?

I do understand that this is a daunting and long term set of goals I have produced. I figure though, since I know my goals now, it would be best to map out the process to most effectively get to my goals without wasted effort. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I know it is long and totally "newbie" of me, but I thought where better to get help on programming then from a bunch of programmers.

Thanks again,

hunky