I have been told by many 'in the know' people that Perl and C are the best programming languages to start with. Which one do you think would be better?

In certain respects PERL might be perceivably easier.

PERL is an odd language in the sense that it doesn't need to be compiled to run, as how it runs if from Script through an Interpreter that then compiles it at runtime.

PERL as you should be aware is used in CGI (Common Gateway Interface. PERL allows people to create server programs, to allow a web input to utilise the servers CPU. (Control Processor Unit)

PERL can also be used as a Interpreter for commandline (using BASH), it allows Batched commands to be run.

PERL also offers the ability to create socket sets, and to utilise other people pieces of code. The Most to date version of PERL has a C++ compiler, which can make executable standalone programs from PERL into C++)

C has to be compiled before it's run, it doesn't run the same method as PERL. C has more extents than PERL and can be more Comprehendsive in comparison. (since PERL is something that someone decided to create to be "Easier" than C)

If your after a language to run batches at commandline, and utilise on the net, go with PERL, otherwise I would start with C.

I agree with Stryder to an extent. If your going to be doing alot of web design, then you could learn Perl but I would recommend PHP. I personally think Perl has gone the way of the dinosaur when it comes to CGI'ing and web programming. Granted though Perl is a very diverse language -- there are many, many modules out there for it and its definitly has its place in the programming community. Its versitle too as Stryder said... its a good all purpose language.. but that doesn't mean its the best for everything. But like I said, if you doing alot of web design, I'd go with PHP. PHP was specificly designed for the web enviroment and its well suited for web work.

As for learning C, you could always do that. C has been around for a long, long time. Alot of quality software has been written with it (apache, qmail and the vast majority of linux software). You'll find most software for *nix based systems in C and C is probably used best under a *nix enviroment, but thats all in opinion. An advantage to learning C is that once you learn it, the migration to PHP is simple... the syntax is virtually the same, if you had a desire to learn PHP.

As Stryder said, Perl has some socket capabilities. I'm pretty sure PHP has socket abilities, but there not very powerful.. but don't quote me on that. If your going to do alot of network programming (daemons and what not)... C or Perl would be good to learn.

Last note... if your into information security, then I would recommend learning C and then Perl. The majority of proof of concept code is written in C, but there is alot written in Perl also.

Both those languages are good to know, and like many before have said it all depends on what you want to do .

But in my opinion if you are just starting out both those languages are the crappiest to start with because both those languages have the 'many ways to do the one thing' concept which is never a good thing when learning to code.

But tha is always a side effect of a flexable language :)

I am a microsoft guru so I will say learn .NET, ASP, COM+, SQL Server, C#