Nothing beats seeing what you do works. I'd choose Python (available on most platforms, easy to learn, very complete) and a good book. Also try to accomplish in

Nothing beats seeing what you do works. I'd choose Python (available on most platforms, easy to learn, very complete) and a good book. Also try to accomplish individual tasks: reading and writing from a file, downloading a web page, printing a document, executing another program, sending a email, parsing an XML file, creating a CGI applicatin, etc.