[Jolly]

Hellou~!

Being the HQ lurker that I am, I've been around Sinisterly for quite the time without really doing anything, more so than I'd like to admit.
However, as things have progressed somewhat with my personal life, I've found myself in the awkward position of reaching adulthood (I don't have to lie about my age of certain websites anymore) along with thoughts of ''What the fuck should I do with my life'' and it hit me one day, a tech-forum I joined long ago on a sleepless night that I happened to fall in love with and continue to stalk people from the shadows.
Since I'm sort of a self-proclaimed tech nut (I don't really know squad) I thought why not advance a future in Software Engineering or Cyber Security, because it feels like fun.
Again, I can not stress on how little I actually know about EVERYTHING.
I'm kinda wagging my tail here asking if someone experienced could recommend me a programming language to learn and/or perhaps offer some material a total noob like I could drink the knowledge from...

I could've just summarized this whole post into one sentence and get the point out but I feel lonely and want to talk type.

TL;DR - What's a good programming language to start with. Give me your wiiiiiiiiiizdom.

[Anime]

Everyone here is going to say Python. <-- calling it now.

I say start with the basics.. but I mean, what do I know, I'm only going to college for computer science next year xC

[ring-1]

Python.
It has an incredible learning community, a vast range of immensely detailed documents, and a suitable syntax for beginners.

I personally started with web-dev when I was really young, then I moved on to Java, and so on from there, essentially I went through a spectrum of high-level to low-level languages.

[Nyx]

@Reiko helped me get started with web programming a while back so you could try him and see what he thinks would be a good language for what you'd like. As for personal opinion, if you'd really like to get into Software Development and you really want something like that as a career, a lot of companies look for people fluent in C++ and/or Java, so those would be 2 good languages to pick up if you have the time, but C++ is a little more time consuming, where as I found Java was fairly easy to pick up.

[Inori]

If you're on Linux or Unix; I suggest python.

I run windows so it's really cumbersome to run and annoying to get working so I'd recommend Ruby (I released some guides) or Web Development (HTML5, CSS3, jQuerry, PHP, Rails and possibly Perl at some point)

[Brynn]

Everyone here is going to say Python. <-- calling it now.

I say start with the basics.. but I mean, what do I know, I'm only going to college for computer science next year xC

Yup, good call @Anime I'm ALSO gonna say python, the learning community there is pretty big, and python makes for a great first programming language. Now if this is not your first language, or if you want to get into software development or you know, you're just up for anything, C++ would be the way to go.

[Dyme]

Python is great and all, but I don't think it would be the BEST first language that a person can learn. I would highly advice either C or C++. Many modern programming languages have a very similar syntax to C, which would make it a breeze to learn langs like Java or PHP. Python, on the other hand, is notorious for it's use of whitespace... making it's syntax less similar to most others. C also provides the most 'rustic' high level programming experience, providing you knowledge of the code that powers your kernel and python interpreter. If it I were to do it all again, I would definitely start with C. Python is still my favorite scripting lang tho

[Brawler]

Python is great and all, but I don't think it would be the BEST first language that a person can learn. I would highly advice either C or C++. Many modern programming languages have a very similar syntax to C, which would make it a breeze to learn langs like Java or PHP. Python, on the other hand, is notorious for it's use of whitespace... making it's syntax less similar to most others. C also provides the most 'rustic' high level programming experience, providing you knowledge of the code that powers your kernel and python interpreter. If it I were to do it all again, I would definitely start with C. Python is still my favorite scripting lang tho

I second Dyme's choice.

I personally started with C/assembly (moving into C++ later) and it was fairly trivial to swap to other languages after learning the basics of these languages. Additionally, the whole compiling and assembly thing gives you some really good insight into how programs actually function at a deep level (Memory allocation, learning wtf the heap is, pushing and popping things from the stack, etc etc).

[Reiko]

If you're too much of a pussy for C, C++ or Python would do fine.

[whatever]

It all boils down to what you're aiming to accomplish with the language you learn. You can't just ask what a good programming language is to start with without stating what you're planning to do with it.

Exploit development or small tools/scripts - Python, Perl, Bash
*nix development (could be exploit dev too) - C, C++, Assembly
Winblows development - C#, VB(.NET), C++
Web development - PHP, SQL syntax, HTML/CSS, etc
Gaming development - Java, C++
Everything - Assembly, or just learn everything above. There are different types of assembly too.