my answer is perl. I use perl, so it's my hammer.

The *reason* I use perl however is 4 fold, but Python has most of these benefits too:

1) perl has been around since the internet was created, good and bad. It's libs are mature. So are Pythons.
2) perl is portable as hell and looks alot like php so syntacticly if this is your first language, a c based one will help you understand non-python examples better at the very least
3) perl's regular expressions and hash tables are second to, well, maybe Python. Python might win this one, but it's a difference of 99.5 and 99.4.
4) perl is easy to read, and fun to write. Personal preference. The stars I was born under. Take your pick.

Perl has tons of examples too and many times php examples can be used easily in perl. Having someone you can ask helps alot too. If your buddy already knows Python, I'd go with Python.

Python is an awesome language. If you want to be a programmer, choose Python - your code will be elegant and easy for you to work on later.

PHP is a common language. If you want to be a marketer, use PHP - your code will be harder to read, but there will be thousands of freelancers who will be able to modify it later when you hire them.

There is nothing PHP can do Python can't, or vice-versa.

If you use Python, check out Django. I love Django, even though I use PHP in 99% of my programming projects.

Python is really great choice. It's very simple to learn, it forces you to write clean code, which is also great. And it's very popular, meaning lots of community support and libraries.

It's probably the best language for anyone to learn as a first language. Don't get me wrong, simple doesn't mean bad or weak. Python has Django, which is amazing web framework, and lot's of other things are done in Python.

Second language of choice would be Ruby, which is little harder, but on the other hand much more elegant. As a Ruby programmer I can say that after working with virtually every programming language and environment there is, I like Ruby the most ... it's very effective and fun to write in.

Please don't start with PHP unless you want to do web, and even then don't start with PHP

Both Python and Ruby are literally made for this. I write these things every other day I need something done in IM that can be automated, and it's much easier to do it in higher level scripting language like Python and Ruby.

As of Perl ... it's not a language I'd recommend. It's powerful indeed, but it forces very bad habits. Ruby was actually made with the intention to create better Perl.

That's exactly what Perl is ... a hammer

I am a fulltime python programmer and just love it. I found it after spending time doing PHP and it was the best thing to happen to me. Python is cleaner, prettier, and easier to code in than PHP... especially if you use Django.

I can go from idea to working tool or site way faster with django/python then I ever could in PHP.

If you do get into python, check out the PyCharm IDE. It's super wonderful and lets you program django without having to use the command line, so there is less program switching needed. (I have no relation to PyCharm.. I just like it).

python is good, and comes with lots of library support for web programming. on the other hand, perl (with the LWP module) is really great for quick jobs, particularly those what need regular expressions.

if you want to scrape use

Python with beautifulsoup...BOOM

Oh and if you're looking to automate things check out

"autoit"

it's way easy

Thanks for the suggestions, I am going to try and fit in some time to learn Python.

Now next up, can anyone recommend a newbie friendly Python tutorial? It would be great if it had some IM related examples.