[oolongCat]

Honestly, Follow any of the mainstream languages you will be alright.

When I began programming I had this exact question myself, and deep down the actual question was "what language is the easiest to learn and is there a language that will not make me quit because its too frustrating?".

I think becoming a programmer means you have to be able to handle a lot of disappointment, and you should be able to deal with the fact that you have to constantly learn (you asking this question on HN means you are going on the right path, it means have that explorer inside you). You will have to deal with frustrations and to do something over and over again until you have perfected it. (this is why I think a lot of us see programming as an art)

So learn any programming language, build the smallest thing you can imagine, start with a hello world, make a calculator, make a text based game, etc etc and keep going until you are fed up of programming and want to take up farming instead.

And one more thing, please don't think memorizing syntax is going to make you a great programmer, great programmers program, they make things and they make more things. Make things and never stop.

All the best.

[optionalparens]

I agree with this completely. I started with assembler, moved on to C, Lisp, Fortran, BASIC, Pascal, and C++, and then many more from there. It never mattered. Sure, I sometimes used the wrong tool for the job and made life harder, but those experiences shaped me.

You can make mistakes and you will learn from mistakes. You can build a house out of cardboard and it might not be a good house, but if it provides you shelter and you call it a house, it is a house. Don't get caught up in the cult of programming language. The good thing about this cult is when you meet people who say, "I am an <insert language> guy," you can turn on your skepticism detector to an extreme level or pretty much ignore them by default because they are either stupid, inexperienced, naive, or living in some bubble that probably won't be the same for you. The tools analogy really does work rather well - you can pound in a nail with a set of plyers, but hey, why would you and why wouldn't you invest in buying more tools when you can afford it?

Getting things done, failing, learning, and problem solving are what you want to be doing among many other things that have little to do with language choice. Don't be too ambitious, just stick with it and get things done.

While I wish more people were better at programming, the truth is you don't even have to be good to succeed on some level. I wish it weren't true, but if you saw the source to most games, you'd cry. When you go up against time, budgets, other people, technical limitations, and more, the end product suffers, but to most people, as long as it succeeds doing whatever they deem valuable, then you won.

Parent really gives good advice to start small. You want your gratification loop to be as constant as you can make it. Trying to build Minecraft, Skyrim, Call of Duty, whatever as your first game might be an option for a few people, but for most it isn't. Don't try to do it, just get things done. If after awhile you see that maybe you can't seem to learn other languages, which does happen with a lot of people, I'd say that maybe it's time to look elsewhere for a career.