If your goal is to get things done in the real world, Python is a great first choice. Learn C/C++ next.
Don't listen to these scheme/functional wackos. It's great -- and once you've been programming for a few years you should definitely learn it, it will improve your programming and allow you to think more elegantly about problems. But starting with scheme is like tying sandbags to your ankles and then training for the hurdles -- in theory you'll be able to jump like superman when you take the sandbags off in a few years, but realistically it's just going to make a challenging task even harder.
Just my 2c, of course. I started with BASIC, then 6502ASM, them Pascal, then C/C++, then a bit of APL and lisp variants, then Python (which was like a dream), then some more scheme, and now I pretty much stick to Python/C++, with a bit of Javascript on the side.
Don't listen to these scheme/functional wackos. It's great -- and once you've been programming for a few years you should definitely learn it, it will improve your programming and allow you to think more elegantly about problems. But starting with scheme is like tying sandbags to your ankles and then training for the hurdles -- in theory you'll be able to jump like superman when you take the sandbags off in a few years, but realistically it's just going to make a challenging task even harder.
Just my 2c, of course. I started with BASIC, then 6502ASM, them Pascal, then C/C++, then a bit of APL and lisp variants, then Python (which was like a dream), then some more scheme, and now I pretty much stick to Python/C++, with a bit of Javascript on the side.