What is the best way to learn programming for newbies and actually be good at it?

I learned through an expensive college, but we started with small console games. I see suggestions for Python, and python is useful and pretty broadly used. I am personally not the biggest fan of python, but that's a preference thing as I like to use white space liberally for readability but white space is meaningful in python. I started with a C/C++ background myself, but my favorite language to work in right now is C#. It's managed and has extensive libraries like python, but you can use strong typing and it's stylistically closer to C++. C# is mostly used in gaming and web development these days. Python gets a lot of use for for small console and utility applications. Our big title games still largely use C++

I really think a small game of some kind is the best practice. Start with something you can do purely in text to get a feel for creating data structures and manipulating objects and then slowly build it up.

When you are ready to jump into graphics, again try a simple game like pong or space invaders. But this is a decent jump up.