What are your short, medium, and long term goals? How much do you understand about how computers and networks work?<p>If you want to start by creating web pages but eventually move to programming, learn HTML. Get really, really good at it - but without CSS. Then learn CSS, and learn how they work together, how they complement each other. Then add Javacript and DOM manipulation. You can do some very cool stuff, you'll learn a lot of logic along the way, make interesting mistakes, etc.<p>If you want to control a computer, get something that speaks Bourne shell (OSX, Linux, etc.) and get really, really good at defensive-minded shell scripting (by defensive-minded I mean always being alert for errors, always quoting variables, always checking return codes, etc.). You will learn a lot about how computers work, how they are structured, etc.<p>In both cases, you will also begin to feel the frustrations of working with these tools: Why doesn't this work, why is this so hard, etc., etc.<p>You could start with something more modern, more powerful, like Python or PHP or Ruby, but will you appreciate their power if you don't have a good understanding of the problems they were created to solve?<p>But that may not matter, if you want to build web apps using powerful modern frameworks. Where are coming from, where do you want to go?<p>There are many, many other ways to answer the question, depending on what it is you actually want to accomplish and how much you understand about how computers work.