You're ready to start learning and to get your very first "Hello World!" program off the ground, but where do you start? It's a great question, but it doesn't have a simple straightforward answer. It can be intimidating trying to sort through and choose one from the almost 9,000 languages (well, according to the Online Historical Encyclopaedia of Programming Languages).
Some Homework Before You Decide...
It's worth noting that if you're just starting out and you're not familiar with anything in the realm of programming or software development, that's fine! We all have to start somewhere. There's some good prep work available as an entry-level offering from Harvard University, CS50x. Taught by David Malan, Doug Lloyd, and Brian Yu, this course goes through important concepts like resource management, encapsulation, and abstraction while also covering a wide spread of HTML & CSS, SQL, JavaScript, Python, and C. I feel that going through this small free course gives a good primer while providing an opportunity to see if this is something you'd like to continue doing.
Different Tools for Different Jobs
Imagine you need to build a house. The only thing that exists right now on your plot of land is the foundation of the house. Beside it are all the pieces of lumber you need to create the structural skeleton of the building. You also have your trusty tool bag, full of various tools. You can probably see where I'm going with this. Could you build the entire house using a screwdriver? Sure. You could stab the 2x4s with the tip and it might take you a day and a half, but you'd get through it eventually. You could also drive the nails through the boards with the butt of the handle of the screwdriver. But obviously neither of those are the ideal method. Languages are the same way. You could technically make a database with JavaScript and it might work fine for a while but the more entries added in, the worse it will perform.
What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?
One of the best pieces of advice that I've seen is to figure out where you'd like to end up and go from there. Do you want to design websites? Are you a data nerd and like to crunch numbers? Do you want to build the next Facebook? What about creating the next great indie game? Each of those choices would have you start somewhere different. If you're having trouble finding out what you'd like to do, you might want to take a quiz or check out Youtube for a day-in-the-life video of different careers (just avoid those nonsense videos only showing the free lunches and ping pong tables). Twitch is also a great place to check out what people are doing. Plenty of people code on stream and are very welcoming to beginners and questions.
Final Thoughts
Starting is the hardest part of any journey. You should have an easier time, however, with the proper planning and resources. Keep in mind that you may run into setbacks and that's perfectly normal. You might change your mind a choose a different path. You may have things that come up in life that force you to take a break for a while. The important thing is that you be as consistent as you can be and that any progress, no matter how small, is still progress.