i have tried learning pd thru bang(book) as well as floss manuals. worked thru the examples, and i have a basic knowledge now. is there some other language that is similar in structure or logic for which resources already exist? like pd is similar to visual basic (im sure its not) so i should check out a book about visual basic to get some higher level lernin.

yeah exactly. i have used max/msp a bit also which is why i came into pd not totally clueless. but a language that is more common that might already have some books/guides/tutorials that kind of follow the same logic. that way there is a built in knowledge base i could look into. my problem is that i am not able to do what i want from the tutorials etc that i have followed.