The most important thing when choosing a first language is to choose a language that will allow you to get stuff done as quickly as possible. The only way to le

The most important thing when choosing a first language is to choose a language that will allow you to get stuff done as quickly as possible. The only way to learn how to program is to build stuff, and if you optimize for that, the minor differences between two languages are actually a pretty marginal factor in comparison to the advantages of getting your hands dirty and having some early successes. I like Python very much and think that it's a fantastic language for building things and probably the best language for learning programming. But if, say, all your friends use Ruby, or you find that Ruby has better libraries for whatever it is you hope to be doing then I'd recommend you choose Ruby. In fact, I think PHP is an awful language and that learning is is a complete waste of time, but if you're in an environment where using PHP is the best way to get up and running, you should choose that. All other things being equal, I think Python would be the best choice for you. It's a great, very versatile language, designed from the ground to be easy to learn and understand. It comes with libraries for doing pretty much anything you might want to do with a computer. It has a wonderful community - very mature and very helpful. You'll find it easy to get very high quality help learning Python.