[dkersten]

Python

Its easy to learn because it has a simple and clear syntax, yet is a powerful language. It allows you to learn various programming concepts one at a time (while other more complex languages may force a bunch of concepts on you before you can do anything useful) and anything you learn will translate to other languages, should you wish to learn others in the future.

Python comes packaged with a large library of pre-written modules and is supported by a lot of third party API's.

Python also has a very active and friendly community of users, so help will be easy to find, should you need it.

Learning Python: http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide

(PS, the same can probably be said for languages like Ruby, but I learned Python first, so have no real experience with Ruby)

[rachnaspace]

Thanks dkersten! I'll check out Python.

What do you think of PHP? Some folks were suggesting that, but I haven't yet checked it out.

[twymer]

If the ideas you hope to prototype live on the web, this is a reasonable choice. However, I don't recommend using PHP as a general programming language.

Python kind of works for everything, if you want to do web dev you can pick up Django, plenty of GUI libraries and it works on all platforms easily.

[dkersten]

This is pretty much what I would have said if I'd checked the comments sooner. PHP works well enough for a web language, but if you want to do anything else, its not so great. Python works, IMHO, equally well for web, desktop GUI, shell scripts etc.

[rachnaspace]

thanks!