I would say he or she should pick up whatever the people close to them use, because that's who they're going to turn to for help first. Yeah, there's a lot of o

I would say he or she should pick up whatever the people close to them use, because that's who they're going to turn to for help first. Yeah, there's a lot of online resources for just about every language and platform out there, so you've got plenty of people in the world who have blogged about X or asked questions about Y on stackoverflow, but ultimately its hard to beat sitting there with someone who walks you through the rough parts like stack traces that are absolutely shit and don't point to the root of the problem in that one out-of-the-way class method, or can point you in a more productive direction when you decide to rewrite a framework you didn't know existed. Of course, some people learn things better the hard way, but that's what I wish I'd had...