[ocicat]

Originally Posted by Crypt

What would be a good start for an absolute beginner?

Find a good tutorial, & start wading through it. Searching for the language's name & the word "tutorial" in your search engine of choice is a start.

Yet in my opinion, online tutorials are still generally spotty, however there are some exceptions:

• For Ruby, I see many people mention http://poignantguide.net/ruby, however this may be it is noticeably odd in presentation. I have never waded through enough of it to know whether it really has substance.
• For Python, I found http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html useful, but some may find it dry. http://diveintopython.org/ is also available online.
• For Perl, I am not aware of in-depth tutorials being available online, but http://perl.com/ & especially http://perlmonks.org/ are useful resources.

You have not mentioned why you are wanting to learn, as the level of motivation is important in getting past the thorny issues which occur in all languages. Nevertheless, for a general purpose language, I would suggest learning Python first because its syntax is less esoteric, & it may be a gentler introduction to programming than the other languages mentioned.

If you are serious in your quest, getting a book at some point will be inevitable. My suggestions would be:

• Programming Ruby: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Ru...9071748&sr=8-1
• Learning Python: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596513986/
• Learning Perl: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596520106/

I have each of these titles & can recommend each of them.