looking for some advice

[Cypher.]

Are you leaning more towards programming, electronics, or both?

I can't speak much on the pure programming side,but while in college I was required to take two programming classes that also integrated the electronics side too. To that end, we learned C, some BASIC, MATLAB, and whatever the hell you could call the Arduino language (Arduino...?).

If you're wanting to dabble in the electronics, I would grab one of these:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...uctId=12268262

And then read:

http://www.arduino.cc/

In a nutshell, the arduino is a microcontroller (mini-computer) that you can use to attach sensors, servos, DC motors, etc to do a crap ton of things. It is also open source so you can find a bunch of free information and programs for it.

As for regular ol' programming, I hear Visual C++ is useful. Again I don't know too much of the pure programming side so maybe someone else can chime in.