Programming GPIOs of a BeagleBone Black

I have just finished ordering my BeagleBone Black. Element14 will now take at least a week before it ships to my home so I have some time to prep myself. After reading Ladvien's post, it looks as if the board is unstable. I ordered it because of 2 reasons- a platform for me to try modifying and building Linux stuff and as a platform to build robots with (that's why I didn't invest in an RPi). I'll look after the Linux distro myself (now that I have some experience with Linux), but I'm facing a problem with the other part. Here is the problem statement-

I want to program the GPIO of this board for using it to control other stuff. I am good with C/C++ and familiar with Python and Javascript, but I've never written any proper code in it. I need to find a way to control the GPIO in C/C++. Can you link me to tutorials or methods to do so. Consider me an absolute beginner in programming GPIOs. All the experience I have is writing and reading other's Arduino code which is quite different.

I want to do the reading part before the board arrives so that I can concentrate on working with it when it does show up.

I would suggest you keep an eye out for something like

wiring.py, or, whatever it may be called for the BBB.