Don't learn C++ as a starter language. C++ and Java are languages that have been mostly evolved from C. C was designed as a convenience tool to replace stack based assembler programming, which is what existed before any of these languages were available. So if you learn C++ first, you will have hard time understanding why there classes, why there is protection, why there are member fields, why inheritence ... the whys will be an endless list and you will never figure it out. If you wanna get that far, buy the C progamming language book and learn C first. In C you will get to understand the roots.

To fast forward and save you some time in programming, learn python. It has all the bells and whistles, and its simple to program.

Read this guy's essay: http://catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

If I were you I would either write a simple program that you think aviation people might need, or taking the employment path I would go for an aviation related software company like one doing flight simulators.