Seriously, pick one with great online resources.  That gives you a lot of options at first glance, it would seem... Of course, online resources vary greatly in terms of quality.  Personally, I wish I'd started (years ago...) with something like Python.  Great resources, great community.<p>Great tutorials: <a href="http://diveintopython.org/" rel="nofollow">http://diveintopython.org/</a> (for the recent Python 3: <a href="http://diveintopython3.org/" rel="nofollow">http://diveintopython3.org/</a>)<p>What it all boils down to is finding a language that teaches you the fundamentals well.  Once you have those basic precepts and fundamentals, you can transfer them quite easily to take on other languages.<p>And Python is also quite easy on beginners.