The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't know what it means for a programming language to be powerful and elegant. Once you learn Lisp, you will see what is lacking in most other languages.
Unlike most languages today, which are focused on defining specialized data types, Lisp provides a few data types which are general. Instead of defining specific types, you build structures from these types. Thus, rather than offering a way to define a list-of-this type and a list-of-that type, Lisp has one type of lists which can hold any sort of data.
Where other languages allow you to define a function to search a list-of-this, and sometimes a way to define a generic list-search function that you can instantiate for list-of-this, Lisp makes it easy to write a function that will search any list — and provides a range of such functions.
In addition, functions and expressions in Lisp are represented as data in a way that makes it easy to operate on them.
When you start a Lisp system, it enters a read-eval-print loop. Most other languages have nothing comparable to `read', nothing comparable to `eval', and nothing comparable to `print'. What gaping deficiencies!
While I love the power of Lisp, I am not a devotee of functional programming. I see nothing bad about side effects and I do not make efforts to avoid them unless there is a practical reason. There is code that is natural to write in a functional way, and code that is more natural with side effects, and I do not campaign about the question.
Lisp is no harder to understand than other languages. So if you have never learned to program, and you want to start, start with Lisp.
You can learn Scheme (and a lot of deep ideas about programming) from Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman. That book is now free/libre although the printed copies do not say so.
Please don't buy books (or anything) from Amazon!
