A practical/immediate suggestion: Forget about reading books and try the following for now. Don't worry about the language wars. First learn to have fun. Have

A practical/immediate suggestion: Forget about reading books and try the following for now. Don't worry about the language wars. First learn to have fun. Have a go at http://www.tryruby.org http://www.tryruby.org - it teaches you to code in Ruby in 15 minutes'ish online. You can type stuff in and try it out immediately. If you like the test drive, then download Ruby and have a go at it. If you liked that, checkout Google's python class - it has great examples, lectures, and even sample assignments. http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/ http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/ They're both competing languages (or so the flame wars make it out to be :) and give you a nice introduction to programming super fast!