Good Starter Language? (was Re: REALBasic and OpenAL)

[Jeremy Fowler]

> I liked Pascal but what do you do with it?

Measure pressure... What the #$@% do you think you do with it!?! 

Delphi 2005 kicks major ass. Nuff said.
 
> Perl seems to be very easy to learn and yet extremely
> powerful and can get very complex.  But it has just
> never really taken off as a mainstream language. 
> However, I've found a few applications that I would't
> write in anything else.

Perl? Might as well be writing code in Mandarin Chinese. The multitude of symbols and one character keywords sacrifices legibility for less typing. Perl is not for the faint of heart or the beginner. I for one hate having to keep a whole library of O'Reilly books by my side while I code. A good language should be intuitive and not require a ton of syntax memorization. Python is better, but not by much. 
 
> I don't really like Java but it's all the rage today. 
> And how many times have we all heard that the new
> language was going to replace all the other languages?
>  Sure, it's good for a lot of things but I really
> don't think I'd recommend it as a beginner language
> any more that I'd make 6-year-olds use a calculator to
> learn 1+1=2.

I have no use for Java.
 
> For a language that is good and introduces you to a
> lot of topics and is easy to start learning and can
> get very complex later as you grow you really can't
> beat C or C++.

C/C++/C# can get a little involved for the beginner. However, it has proven the test of time, and I have to admit I broke my cherry with C. ;-)
 
> BASIC, in all of it's forms, I've found really stinks
> IMHO.

agreed.