[jspiral]

I tell the majority of people who want to dabble with programming to start with javascript, because the environment setup to make something run is so trivial, and they get positive reinforcement from making something that relates to other sites they actually use, not command line output.

If you're really looking for a latin equivalent, I agree with the previous posters (a lisp, python, and c all have merit and are worth getting to eventually).

My own early learning path was basic -> dos shell -> c -> c++

I'm glad I learned c, wouldn't really mind having missed C++.