Maybe you could choice a scripting language to start. I started programming with the C language. In my opinion the C language is easy to getting started with, but much more time is needed to know the algorithm and something about operating system. And everytime I exercise is simply with a DOS GUI, that makes me depressed.
And later I chose a scripting language named ActionScript to start. The scripting language is an object-oriented language, and it can control the behavior of a Flash movie. The scripting language is easy for doing some work that is close to the problem domain, just like trace("HelloWorld") in ActionScript to output a string. And it has a powerful IDE to let you to checkout if your program is going well.
In a word, if you want to start programming in a quick way, a scripting language may be a good choice :-)
