What are some basic c++ programming techniques?

I find some programming hard to absorb. Are there any techniques or strategies or ways to absorb and learn programming languages more easily?

• I thing what I am asking is what studying technique do you find best for studying programming, HTML, CSS and the like? I've studied HTML and CSS at Treehouse and http://Lynda.com.   I know a big part of this is doing projects and just applying what you  learn but for some reason I find it hard for myself to just start  building something. Are there any sites that have projects to practice  on? This makes me feel a little discouraged. As if I don't know what I'm  doing. Any ideas would be great!  Thanks to everyone for your feedback!

• Answer:

  One tiny step at a time. Get a 'hello world' to work. Print out square roots from 1 to 10. Make a program that asks a question on the command line. Draw a square on a window. Draw 2 squares. Draw 5000. It's a fun game to try to make this: http://gotohere.com/StarZ/StarZ.html