If you were to learn a programming language for your first time
jaddison: Seriously, pick one with great online resources.  That gives you a lot of options at first glance, it would seem... Of course, online resources vary greatly in terms of quality.  Personally, I wish I'd started (years ago...) with something like Python.  Great resources, great community.Great tutorials: http://diveintopython.org/ (for the recent Python 3: http://diveintopython3.org/)What it all boils down to is finding a language that teaches you the fundamentals well.  Once you have those basic precepts and fundamentals, you can transfer them quite easily to take on other languages.And Python is also quite easy on beginners.