Which means that for an infrequent programmer, Perl is better. They can get stuff done, using convenient CPAN modules and with lots of useful assistance. Choosing modules can be confusing, but they can ask somewhere like here. For a more frequent programmer, well if you tackle lots of different things, then CPAN pays off again, and again, and again. A better language only beats a better library if the language is quite a bit better, you are better and library design than the library author, and you can amortize the cost of writing that library over a lot of further work. You will note that Paul Graham used Common Lisp (in his opinion a much better language) for the core stuff, and then Perl for all of the random bits that needed to get done but not built on (like email).

Oh, and the demise of Perl 5 is often predicted and has yet to come true. The truth is that Perl 6 is unlikely to be released for a good time yet, and after it is, the differences are such that Perl 5 will continue to grow on a separate trajectory. Therefore the possibility of Perl 6 on the horizon shouldn't dissuade people from learning Perl 5 one bit.

Oh, I forgot one point. Whatever language you end up choosing to learn first, for the love of all that is holy get your hands on an Open Source operating system. It will make your life, way, way easier and far more enjoyable. Pick up something like Redhat (other distros) it's dead simple to install and use, and if you want to keep you're existing OS installed, you can (although I'd recommend you ditch it, you'll never want it again :). Even if you're barely into programming, it's worth it.

If you need any help with this, just reply to this post. If you do decide to stick with a different proprietary operating system you can still use all the languages I've listed, but it won't be nearly as fun :). Anyways, best of luck, reply if you need any help :).

Oh, and since I'm going to get it anyways now... Vi sucks, Emacs Rocks! ;-P

This is useless advocacy.

Worse than that, it is stupid useless advocacy.

People need to tackle things one at a time. Telling someone who is learning a language that they also need to use an operating system is counterproductive. Telling someone that they need to tackle an operating system without giving them any solid reasons is just silly. Claiming that learning something new will make their lives easier is iffy in the short term, and given the proliferation of APIs in open source projects, is pretty doubtful in the long term. Suggesting that they immediately ditch their existing systems, which have lots of data that they care about and all of the applications that they know how to use, is a recipe for utter disaster.

Now yes, if you need a certain level of control of your system, then open source is better. I am not adverse to the right people using it for the right reasons. At the moment, in fact, I am typing into Galeon running on a Debian system. If this system was directly facing the Internet, I would set up and run OpenBSD. In comparison to what I am happy with, Red Hat is an insecure piece of proprietary shite that hobbles its basic update and dependency system because they need something to charge businesses a premium for. Have I established that I am not a Windows weenie yet?

OK, then now you know where I am coming from. So listen up. Please don't throw around counter-productive, useless advocacy. People get burned by it and it makes it harder to apply useful, targeted advocacy when there is an opportunity to make a real difference. As the doctors like to say, "First, do no harm." Please.

I agree mostly with your post, most people need to learn one major thing at a time, but to quibble: A poor carpenter blames his tools. What exactly is proprietary about redhat (all source code is available), and what's so hard about using something (free) like Ximian RedCarpet, which is essentially apt-get for RPMs, with both GUI and CLI interfaces?

I agree that the redhat network system sucks. RedCarpet doesn't. I use debian and redhat daily, and they both work fine for me when you used correctly.

-Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from doubletalk.

You make a very valid argument, and I did fail to adequately address certain essential points. So to clarify a few things:

• By default, I say again, by default, the Red Hat installation is rather insecure. This is almost purely due to installing unnecessary software. This is obviously fairly easy to fix, but it not completely straightforward. Have a look at the Redhat security quickstart, and you should be able to easily secure your system to an acceptable level (definately far superior to windows anyways). I stand corrected, I should have mentioned this point.
• I recently was asked by three friends how to best get started with Perl. They were all running windows and had little experience with programming. I set them all up with activestate perl. One was happy with it, the other two said this sucked. They were obviously referring to more than just the actual executable, but the environment. I then helped them install Redhat (not like they needed much help) and they found it much more usable. Face it, the windows CLI sucks, try getting a really good editor (like kate) for windows, and ultimately the whole perl philosophy goes against windows like operating systems. It simply goes better with OSS.

As for ditching their systems with "lots of data", I did suggest alternatives.

if this system was directly facing the Internet, I would set up and run OpenBSD

I'd properly administer basically any of the open source *nix-like distributions, and probably end up with a better track record.