This question almost always needs further qualification, to determine what the goal is. Learning to program is different from preparing for a new career. You ge

This question almost always needs further qualification, to determine what the goal is. Learning to program is different from preparing for a new career. You get the drift. That said, for "pure" learning to program, I like the DrRacket IDE and the course book "How to Design Programs" ( http://htdp.org/ http://htdp.org/ ) because it teaches problem solving with programming. And that's what it's about. Should give a newb a sense of whether this is something they want to spend their time doing. The concept are transferable to other languages; the specific language skills not so much.