Best Programming Language to start with?

Hello peeps. As someone who hasn't been lucky enough to be immersed into the world of programming when he was young, and has a hard time getting into it with net ressources, I need an easy and fast-learning language to start off with.

Any recommendations? Cheers!

>>16
Poor guy. Both for Java (dear god, make the pain stop) and for trying to learn C++ first. Didn't you dabble in QB for a while though?

I think C++ was my fourth language (QBasic -> Asm -> C -> C++), and yet it still confused the hell out of me. In the end I concluded it was a result of the book I was using. The concepts are easy, and the implementation is not difficult, but a good book or mentor is absolutely critical...