Beginner programmer help.

I've been teaching myself C for a little while and I plan to study programming in university. I was wondering what languages I should try next. I'd rather avoid web development if I can. I saw Microsoft's express books on VB and C# and was thinking of getting one of those. If you guys could suggest some books (titles, authors or publishers) that I could easily find in a book store like Borders (Chapters for me here in Canada though) I would greatly appreciate your help and someday I may be posting here a little bit wiser because of it.

Haskell is pretty great, but only go for it when you're ready.

Learn an Object-Oriented language, I'd recommend C#. It has the syntax of C, isn't an abomination like C++ and is godly compared to Java (has operator overloading, proper generics and even LAMBDA EXPRESSIONS). You can also use Microsoft's Visual C# Studio Express to quickly create GUIs if you need that.

Python is nice because of its standard library, and the indentation isn't really forced. Though its ``one way to do it'' philosophy might put you off a bit.

Lua is also nice because you can easily embed it in a C application.

For a ``gentle'' introduction to functional programming, you can try out Erlang. Many of its concepts will be new to you, but it's really interesting and pretty unique compared to other languages.

Don't touch VB ever.



As for the SICP suggestions, it might help you understand the concepts you never came across (such as recursion). It's quite a good introductory text, but my opinion doesn't really count since I didn't even finish reading the first chapter.