I was in a similar situation a while ago, and I really found the articles at linuxfocus.org to be helpful, especially this one. (It is about building a simple robot)
Linuxfocus.org (which is now hosted by tldp.org, but still has all the archived articles) is a good place to start for a programmer who wants to get into electronics. It is a linux hacking site that did some hardware on the side, so it tends to have beginner level electronics with some intermediate level programming to make really cool things.
The list of hardware articles can be found here.
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I was in a similar situation a while ago, and I really found the articles at linuxfocus.org to be helpful, especially this one. (It is about building a simple robot)
Linuxfocus.org (which is now hosted by tldp.org, but still has all the archived articles) is a good place to start for a programmer who wants to get into electronics. It is a linux hacking site that did some hardware on the side, so it tends to have beginner level electronics with some intermediate level programming to make really cool things.
The list of hardware articles can be found here.