I am not convinced that starting with programming is the best way to learn how to make games.
The important skill is to be able to take resources--be they paper, rocks, Microsoft Word, or full blown programming skill with all the best libraries--and come up with a way to make a game out of that.
When you understand the underlying idea of how to represent what you want to make with an arbitrary medium, programming and other tools just become a matter of translation (and the occasional weird technical hickup).

Using all the best modern widgets* is great if you want to reach a larger audience, and if you can start with pygame or c++ or Purebasic or BGT or HTML5 and get running quickly and satisfactorally, great!
In my experience, though, there is no "one size fits all" approach to game development.

* I have no idea what a widget is. I think it's a word for "arbitrary thing made by techies", which just kinda makes it annoying. Eh, language evolves, whether I like it or not.

Hello Heidi.
Funny I was going to suggest the same thing learn python the hard way. Read that along with the python documentation and you should have a pretty clear idea on how python works after reading all that. You might want to try both pygame and pyglet there both great gaming libraries. Eventually you can decide which one you prefer.
One thing don't start out trying to do an enormous project that will just get you frustraded. Start out with small programs like ones that print text to the screen, guess the number, small text adventure games things like that. Practice everyday and before you know it you will be writing the next swamp or operation blacksquare.
Hth.

hello,
you can get python from
here
but, do not think about advanced projects at first, because they fully mix you up

thanks

It's an msi file, so probably.
It isn't clear from the URL whether it's the 32 bit or 64 bit version. You can run either on a 64 bit system, but you need to know which it is, if you want to install extra packages later.

You want the 32 bit version. No one uses the 64 version unless they are going to use all 64 bits and I can guarantee you you won't be in the next 10 years.

My favorite is making blackjack games. I really like playing blackjack and it is super easy to make. But choose your favorite little game and copy it. I find copying games really really helps me create good practices.

Hello.
I'll have to disagree with frastlin copying code isn't good because once you paste and run it you have no idea what it does unless you read it in great detail which can be confusing. Type out all your code so you know exactly what each piece of code is doing. Plus typing it out will save you a lot of time because if you do the copy and paste thing eventually you will have trouble finding spacific code that you need, that you can copy and paste.
For example you learn programming by copying and pasting and eventually you need pieces of code to paste because you want to make a 3d audio game. But then you will run into some problems because you won't be able to find the exact pieces of code you need and because you never learned how to type out your code you don't have the spacific skills to make your 3d audio game.
So type out your code. Whether you just program as a hobby or plan to be a professional working for google or apple it's a good idea to type your code out.
Hth.