A lot of people start with Python. It's easy to start with, and also one of the more popular languages. (It's also used widely in Big Data, which is one of th

A lot of people start with Python. It's easy to start with, and also one of the more popular languages. (It's also used widely in Big Data, which is one of the new fields that's well paid and in demand.) The advice I got when starting out was to learn one language really well -- all the features and major libraries -- and then dabble in some other languages. Harvard's free online course CS50 was a great way to get exposed to a lot of languages and concepts quickly. A real career-booster: get a junior entry-level position doing actual programming. Besides beefing up your resume, it gives you truly useful real-world experience. To that end, create a GitHub account early on, and then upload code that you're proud of there so potential employers can eventually see it. If you can't get paid work, volunteer -- find an open source project, review its code, find one where you can dive in. (If you don't feel comfortable writing code, you can write documentation.)