I think you should just choose a language and get a book or a tutorial on the internet and just start with simple stuff. Don't try to make something that is verry complicated at first because you first have to learn the basics.
If you are going to make a command line RSS reader you will need to
- Open a tcp/ip socket
- implement the http protocol
- parse xml data
- print the result on the screen
I am not talking about storing the messages on your drive or creating a nice gui.
If you want some nice programs to star with then Try the exams posted in this forum. Once you have done a few of those then you will know some basic stuff and you can try to make something bigger.
My very fisrt program was a small game where you had to guess a number between 0 and 100 and the computer would say if the correct answer is higher or lower.
Good luck and let us know if you have made something.