What is the best language for a newbie to learn?

[Wybiral]

The answer is (and will probably alway be...): It's up to you!

It depends what you want to do and where you want your programming to go. There is no universally superior language (despite what you may have read) just try some of them out and see what you like. Don't ask us what you should learn... We will all give different answers because we all program in different languages, from python to ruby, from java to C, from C# to C++, from lisp to perl, from php to ASM to... All of them...

Why do we all program in such different languages? Because none of them are better or superior, it is up to you to decide what language you like and what kind of programming you want to do. Don't expect to figure it out simply by asking us.

If you still insist on an opinion, here is a list of post's that might help:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=326971
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=233405
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=308831
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=194845
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=320836
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=316601
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=315557
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=317188
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=316418
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=314348

[maxamillion]

Amen

[Tomosaur]

I think we should compile a list of resources for various languages and then sticky and lock the topic.

[Wybiral]

I think we should compile a list of resources for various languages and then sticky and lock the topic.

I second that. This question is beginning to flood these boards, having a nice list for people to go straight to should help reduce that a little without them having to spend a bunch of time digging up previous post's and adding to the pile of previous post's.

[pmasiar]

Compiling resources is lot of hard work, dome by one person... IMHO better way to share the workload when creating consensus opinion is wiki way. There still could be editwars, but reasonable people can agree to disagree and express opinions :-)

I just found wikibooks, with excellent python tutorial for non-programmers (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-Programmer%27s_Tutorial_for_Python). Maybe we can use wikibooks stucture to build a bunch of wiki pages about how beginner can select first programming language and start programming. Using wikibooks we also invite bigger community.

I am not sure how to resolve different opinions in a post developed by single person. Do we start another discussion, and edit main post according to comments? Who is final arbiter?

[hod139]

I doubt having a wiki will stop people from asking this question. If people are not willing to do a simple search (as Wybiral just did resulting in many threads) before posting the same question what makes you think they will search for or read a wiki page?