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I'm in no way an expert so take things I say with a grain of salt, but I can tell you some things that I encountered when trying to learn.

Starting was the hardest part for me because I instantly wanted to do everything and it was frustrating to have just barely grasped the concepts of programming. Not only was this frustrating but starting was also a slog. It took a long time to learn all the basics and understand them well enough where I could take information from elsewhere and build upon my knowledge. At the beginning it seemed like many books, tutorials, and videos assumed I knew information that I didn't, so my questions as to "why" never got answered. So for me the hardest part was the beginning and I assume that's what stops a lot of people from progressing.

I think having a medium that encouraged me to learn more helped a great deal. I wanted to make games, so learning more enabled me to do more. I started out making text adventures in C++ just with Visual Studio which didn't require much knowledge so it was a good starting point. Then I moved to making 2D games with C# and XNA and I learned a great deal more about classes and the actual flow of OOP. And then I discovered Unity and things really blew up. I knew enough to make simple games and was hooked on trying to do more and that's how I ended up here. 

This may be a long winded response but I guess it boils down to start small and work your way up. If you look up tutorials make sure you understand the code that's being presented. I've followed tutorials before and written code along with a video but in the end, I ended up with code I didn't understand and couldn't really edit. I had lots of questions on "why" that never got satisfied. Other than that, just find the best way to learn for you. For some people it's books, others it's videos. for me it was a combination. Books really helped me start and grasp the concepts, but for more advanced things it was hard to understand and a video or example was much more helpful. I had a Unity book and followed along making an adventure game and I remember creating the inventory system they described, but in the end what I mentioned above happened. I followed the instructions, ended up with a working inventory, but had no clue how it actually worked. Setting smaller goals and accomplishing them made the learning process longer but more understandable. And now I'm still learning a lot. I'm in a place where I can look at the projects and code I wrote last year and instantly see code that can be improved, and hopefully next year I'll see the same thing.

Maybe this helped you and maybe it didn't but I hope you'll give it a shot and see where it ends up.  I learned the most when I was having fun, and I find a great deal of joy programming. I think of it as a puzzle with infinite solutions, and the puzzle is to find the most efficient solution. If you want to start small, just download visual studios community edition and make yourself some simple C# winforms applications. It's a good entry point without the need of fancy graphics and can do whatever you want. You could make a custom DM screen, or a personalized reminder app, or even a really cool text adventure. If you want to make games specifically, Unity might still be a good starting point if you don't overwhelm yourself but I'm honestly not sure. I don't have much experience with other game engines since I wanted to pick one and really learn it inside and out. I can't recommend XNA anymore since that language is pretty much dead. So just try things out and see where it takes you :D