IMO a big part of the choice ought to be subjective, a.k.a. personalized. Important subjective aspects: 1) Rank what you've seen in list order, most-interestin

IMO a big part of the choice ought to be subjective, a.k.a. personalized. Important subjective aspects: 1) Rank what you've seen in list order, most-interesting first. It doesn't matter if you just like the logo, or mascot, or other irrational things. That's still free emotional energy you can tap into. 2) Rank based on how they fit your technical and logical needs. Platforms you want to develop for, libraries you may need, tooling or editors or OSes you want to use. Support for your native written language. 3) Look at the project's subjective past. Why did it start, why did the dev team last change, what's the overall story they are writing. Does it match well with your story? 5) Look at your probable future. Are there any future needs you'll need to meet with this education? Does the language help you toward those ends? Again you'll probably want to rank them. 5) Look at the probable future of the project. When was the last release? Are modern libraries or tools supporting it? Is the website up to date? Is the forum covered with posts asking when there will next be a release, or is the core team still energetic or stable? Upon answering these personalization questions, that's when I'd look at more objective factors, like what other people say about it based on their personal circumstances. Good luck to you, there are tons of amazing choices out there, and some beginning programmers can even start with more than one language...