Hmmm....
Depends what you want to do. I would have to go with Visual Basic for a jumping block onto other high languages like C, C++, C# and maybe J# if that's what you like. Best idea would be to download the Visual Studio 2005 Beta from
here and fiddle with it. You'll pick it up soon and then you can easily go onto fiddling with C++, C# and J#, or go onto learning some C.
If its Web Programming then its got to be HTML, you can go on to DHTML, XML, innumerable extensions of that and ASPX, to which you can use and learn some Visual Basic, C++, C# or J# again which will branch out into the higher Languages above. Then there's PHP if you bend that way