Wanting to give back

I've been hanging around the scene for quite a long time and I've taken much from it. For the longest time I've been wanting to learn how to code for systems such as the PSP but I have no idea where to even start.
I had a book for a while, one of those Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days books that didn't really do me a whole lot of good. Sure it showed me some of the basics, but it never got into anything graphical. I can crash my way through BASIC and I have a general understanding of other languages, but I can never seem to figure out how things go from text to graphics. The book I had would have been fine had I wished only to code text-based adventure games :rolleyes:.
So what I'm asking here is, how does one get started programming? Are there any good, free, online tutorials/excersizes? I run Linux so compiling things is easy enough. Are there different libraries I would need to aquire? Etc, etc.
Anywho, you can either reply to this post or send me a PM with any pointers and I thank you for your help!

P.S. Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this post, wasn't sure where to stick it.