First Language

[sargx]

Learn Fortran and Cobol first.. kidding. Actually, the route a lot of schools take is:

1) Basic
2) Pascal
3) C/C++
4) Asm

Assuming you're working in a Unix Environment, take C over C++. If you were in a windows environment, I'd recomment C++ over C. Basic is used only for a week, don't stick with it. Pascal is a good learning language, teaches the fundamentals to programming. C/Cpp are the developing languages that you'll actually use to write your own programs. Asm is when you want to become "super elite programmer".. you get a membership card and you learn a secret handshake when you reach this level.

[sw1gzilla]

I agree with sargx about taking C over C++ especially since it seems you're learning a language to incorperate with linux. Once you learn C... every other language after that is very similar just with different commands/keywords.
Hope this helps

[roswell1329]

To quote Reality:

Well it depends on what you want to do. If you are wanting a web language, go PHP. PERL is nice too for web applications and is easy enough to learn. C and C++ are both excellent languages.

I agree with this totally. There are many new languages coming out, and they are becoming more and more specialized for specific tasks. PERL is a great language if you're manipulating a lot of plain-text data (it has great regular expression support). It's also achieved a strong following for cgi programming. Python is an intriguing language with built-in object-oriented abilities. I haven't used it, but it is used by many companies for some fairly robust scripting (RedHat uses Python for a lot of their setup scripts), as well as database manipulation and cgi. Ruby is fairly new, and very similar to Python/JavaScript. C/C++ is a great language all-around. It's incredibly fast, well established and supported, and highly portable. A bit clunky for quick scripts, but it is well equipped for deep-level system resource manipulation (memory, etc). I love PHP for websites. It has added functionality never before available for web developers.

And this is only a few of the more popular languages out there. There are many, many more to choose from. I'd recommend deciding what kind of programming you'll be doing most of, and start with the language best suited for that. If you don't know, C/C++ would give you the strong foundation for any other languages you may want to pick up in the future. Good luck!