indeed it is, it's a great time to start learning to programming May I point out the maemo.org Coding Competition Beginners are very welcome

I also develop on Windows 7 so that won't hold you back from getting started The best place to start, imo, is with the Qt SDK - it has everything you need to design, develop, compile and run the applications you develop. You can check out more about it and download it as a package from here http://qt.nokia.com/products/qt-sdk. It come with examples and tutorials and there are a lot more on the internet. Qt programming used to be all about C++ but more recently QML has become more promient. A Qt Quick application is a bit of both. QML is a scripting language and let's you do some fancy and powerful things with a shorter learning curve than with a traditional programming language such as C++. So I'd recommend learning more about getting started with the QML examples and try playing about with the code yourself. in my opinion it's the easiest way to get familiar with Qt development and quickest way to have something running on your phone.

We also have a Development forum on maemo.org - http://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=13 where you can ask for advice, no question too stupid so don't be shy (I've asked a few daft ones myself in the past). There are also Nokia developer forums.

QML and C++ are not the only languages you can program for the Qt environment, other options are available such as Python. But if you are genuinely new to programming then QML may be the simplest way to get started.