Any answer to this questions is dependent on your goals and current knowledge level. Are you trying to program something specific? If so, does that platform (i

Any answer to this questions is dependent on your goals and current knowledge level. Are you trying to program something specific? If so, does that platform (iOS, Android) have a specific language you need to use or can you choose the stack (web)? Are you trying to learn how to program? You mention you don't have any specific platform interests so are you just looking for a good starter language to learn? Here are my opinions: Python: A really strong language to learn as your first. Powerful, good external packages. Strict syntax means you learn how to do things the right way Java: Used everywhere and can be applied to almost any project. Verbose but has solid performance and ability to segregate tasks and concerns. Ruby: Rails (about the only reason I can think to really use Ruby). Javascript: Easy to pick up but also easy to falter because the language gives you so much freedom you can easily do things wrong and not realize until much later. That being said, for the initiated, JS is having a renaissance for frontend (angular,et al) and backend stacks (node, et al). C++/C#: The father of modern OO programming languages and his sexier grandson that took the best parts of everything before and placed a Microsoft sticker on it. PHP: Wordpress and Facebook still run on this aging server side language. And then from this list you have a ton of variations on each like Scala and Clojure falling out of Java. Go is out there as well. Objective C became Apple's Swift. I think the best way to start is really C++ or Java. Learn the fundamentals, data types, algorithms, performance tradeoffs, OO design and fundamentals. Take those skills and carry them over to any other language or application you want to work on. Even the ones that aren't strictly OO like JS.