What is the best language to start out with for a beginner? Any good book in particular? Thanks.

My first programming book was "Beginning C++ for Dummies", some people think that C++ is a bad first language because it is difficult, but hey! Why not jump in at the deep end.

I have look at multiple programming languages and found a good amount of profitable ones. One is Java and as said earlier C++, both are good but they say that and "C" language is harder to learn. But once you do learn it your can pretty much learn any language as it has a lot of the same rules. Jave is nice and has the ability to make applets, so you can put you Java program on a web page. This is my advice and may not be what you're look for. Hope you find one that works.

A year ago or so, I too would have recommended Java. Not so now. It's pretty much an open secret that Java has been on a steep decline since Oracle purchased Sun (and with it, rights to the Java language).

C++ remains a solid language, but not an easy one to learn on one's own. You are likely to find compile-time or execution-time errors that are cryptic and difficult to understand. So you end up spending your time working through problems rather than learning fundamental programming concepts. I recommend that you take a college course or make friends with someone with C++ experience to help you through those difficult moments you will certainly have.

As an alternative you might consider Python. It is an up-and-coming internet and cloud programming language. It is a very easy language to learn, and well suited for beginning programmers. I also recall reading that it is extensively used at Google and Amazon. Open Source cloud-initiative software projects are being written in Python, so the language has a " new-age hipness" about it.