I truly do not understand all the objecting, irrelevant, unhelpful and inconclusive posts after the generous and knowledgeable overview that berry120 has posted.
I've got an idea, if you disagree with berry120, by all means start your own thread with your version of where to start with programming according to [your username]. How about that? Make your own dissertation on that thread which it will definitely be more useful than all the empty post I wasted time reading in these 2 pages.
About >95% of the posts after the first two could be ignored with no fear of loosing precious information.
And besides, while reading the two initial posts I didn't feel that the author was forcing anyone to choose a language (be it a "mother", "father", or "uncle fester" language
LOL!) over another. It was merely an advice very well supported by experienced opinions and facts which I won't reiterate as they were (to me at least) self-evident.
In conclusion, many thanks to you berry120 for taking the time to share the insights and juicing up the pros, cons and advices in just a couple posts. That was some very helpful information therefore thanks again berry120, your advice was much appreciated here!
Cheers!
PS: berry120 your time would be better spent avoiding trying to make some "heard-of-reading" users understand why HTML is not a language... Perhaps writing updated tutorials for beginners or consolidating helpful info into more digestible, newbies' bite-sized overviews and training/study material would make more sense
And if you won't feel like spending your time on making a tutorial for newbies, maybe it's best to turn a deaf ear and a blind-eye on nonsensical posts filled with empty criticism and dedicate your time to doing something you'll enjoy more.