If that's your criteria for a good first language, then I'd say shell script. You already need to know a subset of the shell and its commands anyway, to be able

If that's your criteria for a good first language, then I'd say shell script. You already need to know a subset of the shell and its commands anyway, to be able to use the computer in the first place. So from there, learning the programming-language aspects of it is a natural progression.