I made an abortive attempt to learn C++ by myself long ago, and was frankly scared of programming for a while because of it (was fine with BASIC, but.. a good idea of how I felt: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1178).

But a couple months ago I decided to give it another go with Scheme and I have been pleasantly surprised by how much more natural it seems to me. I'm having fun!