in my opinion the language you learned should meet with your working environment, ASP is supported well by windows,php is faster,it all depends.

Troy's post gets a tumbs up *raises thumb*

i started with html, because my brother was doing it in college, then xml. Which bother give a nice simple intro into how prgramming languages work (which you already have with the c/c++ knowledge). then c-programming.

now onto using Visual Basic software. heading for Javascript (which i have some understanding of), Java and it seems by what i've seen here.. php

Btw, I've started working with Python. I'm very impressed so far. Python is a mature, robust, efficient language somewhere between PHP and C. Python is a fantastic scripting language for shell tasks. You can also develop rich GUI applications with Python--apps for Windows, Linux, or Mac. For web dev, you can use Python as a CGI language or you can use the Apache mod_python. From the trends I'm seeing, I believe LAMP may soon also mean, Linux/Apache/MySQL/Python. There are some very powerful Python IDEs available with robust debugging features.

I've heard really good things about python as well, although I haven't used it. I did see an impressive screencast for turbogears (uses python).

No matter what language you learn I would encourage you to begin learning good design patterns along side your learning the syntax and functionality of whatever language you choose. I'm a fan of object-oriented and model-view-controller design patterns. I know PHP only, but its worth noting that some of the other server-side languages are likely to "encourage" you to use better design patterns than PHP might. My point really though: Learn good design practices and you will write less code or not write the same code more than once

I used perl and python at ruby but then discovered Ruby.

Try it in your browser. I bet you love it. Even the Kaiser Chiefs love it

http://tryruby.hobix.com/