programming languages

[Nitewulf]

could someone reccomend some good programming languages for begginers?

[Alcatraz]

The first thing I learned was Visual Basic. It's good if you run Windows and IE. Make sure you know HTML if you want to deal with websites. There are plenty of languages out there and it really doesn't matter what you start with. JavaScript is also a good tool for internet work. So is Java.

[Nitewulf]

Thanks for the info, I will try and find some info on Visual basic.

[Tenaga]

another good programming language to learn is C++ which was my first. then i went into html which is useful for web design and so forth. i touched on flash and javascript and i am now currently taking vb6 (visual basic 6.0). you should learn at least two of those and you should be on the right track.

[Vorlin]

Programming! It's the death of me! Seriously, programming rocks. There's nothing I can't do when I'm at the shell prompt about to make a program, hehe...

Anyways, onward with the list:

C: good language for low-level programming. Can write/read data from files/descriptors/memory/etc... Sucks ass on string interpolation. You have to compile the code so something like
GCC is needed.
C++: not much on this I know about, a "better" C.
Perl: the almighty-do-everything interpreter (on the fly, no compiled exec needed). Does everything from text file manipulation (what it's made for) to database reads/writes to cgi to page formation, etc...really good stuff.
Shell: various shell programming (bash,sh,tcsh,zsh, and others) allows for high-level programming that sometimes is the best solution for quick-n-dirty programs.
VB: visual basic...spend one day with this and you'll be able to do anything that Windows can throw up. Pretty easy to learn but VB "writers" I don't consider real programmers, hehe...
Java: great server-side programming that Sun created. Can create standalone apps or web-interfaced programs. Good stuff. Currently on 1.4.1 beta right now at http://java.sun.com .
HTML/Javascript: very good to know as webpages revolve around HTML. Nowadays, you don't need half the tags that you needed a few years ago so it's even easier. Do it with notepad/vi/emacs/etc, and not with Frontpage. You can't even remotely call it "programming" as it's not a real language and it's even less if you 'drag-n-drop' from Frontpage or any other GUI driven program. Maybe I'm biased, but the keyboard's there for a reason... Other things that involve the web is flash/shockwave.

Hope this gives you an idea of what you can do with programming and helps you on your way.