No, seriously. If you've never programmed before, this will teach you far more than you'll need, initially, but later on you'll realize that you picked up a lot of really good habits and never needed to unlearn the bad ones.
Try it. If you like it, you won't look back. If not, perhaps a career in finance isn't such a bad idea anyways.
If the OP is interested in learning to hack, in the sense of making computers do great things, then this is the best resource suggested on this thread. In addition, MIT published videos of the lectures by the authors of this book (http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lec...). They are spectacular.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
No, seriously. If you've never programmed before, this will teach you far more than you'll need, initially, but later on you'll realize that you picked up a lot of really good habits and never needed to unlearn the bad ones.
Try it. If you like it, you won't look back. If not, perhaps a career in finance isn't such a bad idea anyways.