Yahoo Answers: Best web building programming language for beginners?

I’ve been tinkering around on Yahoo Answers. There is an ego-feeding element in having an answer selected as the “Best Answer” to a question. In an attempt to enlarge that ego boost, I thought I might duplicate some of the answers I’ve been providing in that forum…

Question

Best web building programming language for beginners? I am an absolute beginner in web site programming, but want to pick it up. Any advice on what languages I should begin with? Thanks.

Best Answer:

If you are not already well-versed in HTML, CSS and Javascript, you must begin with those—web programming is concerned first with generating web pages. Until you can do that, there’s no reason to learn a web-friendly programming language from which you can generate web pages that use live data and user input. If you’re already set in the page creation arena, I would suggest learning Ruby and using it to build “Ruby on Rails”-based web sites. You’ll face a little steeper learning curve on the front end, but the grounding you’ll gain from using an object-oriented language, “Model, View, Controller” application design and “best practice” web site implementation concepts will more than pay off, in the end.