As beginner you need to be prepared to pick up a few languages.


Lisp / Scheme
Ruby / Python / Smalltalk  (Ruby being the accetable religious choice in
this category :)
C# / Java depending library framework is useful
Haskell / Ocaml / or quite a few other variations, perhaps even F#
c and C++
Lua / Io
Assembler

for db backed web apps, RoR is a smart bet.
Windows based apps? C#
DirectX game? C++ with a splash of Lua

Scheme/ Lisp will helpl a lot with C++ meta programming with templates,
which is what the next up coming C++ standard makes heavy use of.

C++ claim to fame is at the end of the day you can pretty much do anything
with it.  Many of the dynamic language in fact make it easy to cross into C/
C++ code to provide stuff that would be impossible in the orginal language.
But while it can do things, trying to do a db driven web site is gonna be
slow.

Lisp is great in that its a multi paradigm language, you want OO? well
just implement it in the language want a pinch of AOP? no problem.  This is
just a great way of thinking about software

Ruby, fantastically pragmatic and relatively easy to meta program, but other
than writing db driven websites with rails it lacks the library support that
some other languages have  (though things are changing quickly)

but, ruby is a good starting language, C++ is a good language to go along
side it as you can use it to bridge other frameworks into it.   But if your
want to do anything Windows technology centric, C# is a good option.