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The best introductory language is, hands down, Javascript. It's ubiquitous and free. It's interpreted so results can be had as quickly as you can hit the reload button. It can teach classical procedural programming but it's also thoroughly Object Oriented. And it supports advanced concepts like lambda and closures. In short, javascript is as advanced as you want it to be.

pcx99

While javascript is a powerful tool, I do not feel it's best for a beginner. While it's nice that it is client-side, Javascript doesn't enforce some proper coding techniques (such as ending lines of code with a semi-colon). I've found PHP to really be the best for anyone who is learning.

Javascript is a *bad* first language in a compsci course setting. PHP sucks for the same reason as Javascript, it focuses too much on the "web" and it pretty bad for doing "regular" stuff.

pcx99 - You're absolutely correct on all points. JS is a very good first language for all the reasons you specify (IMHO).

Evidence - proper coding techniques? Some languages use end-of-line to mean end-of-command (Python) and others allow both (Ruby).

sigzero - "regular" stuff? Everything has an environment. JS runs in a browser. PHP runs on a server handling web-page generation. Bash scripts run on a *nix server. VBA modules run inside MS Office apps. To imply that the "web" isn't a subset of "regular" is very strange to me.

@jimbowj

That is such a lame argument. If I chose Perl (or Ruby or Python) I could do all of those environments. That fact that JS is web only makes it bad for a first language, if by that you mean compsci first language. PHP is in the same boat as JS even though with PHP you *can* program on the command line, I wouldn't. Python is currently the choice of MIT.