I first learned programming writing BBC BASIC; perl is now my weapon of choice but I'm not sure I would have liked it nearly as much had I learned it first.
Interestingly (perhaps) I repeatedly hear from people with language/humanities background that they tried both python and perl and found perl much, much easier to start to get things done with - the more natural-language-ish aesthetic of perl being a strong contributor to that (I'm a pure maths grad but my parents are both Eng. Lit. grads, so I guess I sort of count in the "humanities background" category).
On the other hand, people with non-humanities backgrounds almost always found python easier to start to get things done with, even if they later found perl to be their preference.
Above comments based purely on anecdata; take them for what you will.
Interestingly (perhaps) I repeatedly hear from people with language/humanities background that they tried both python and perl and found perl much, much easier to start to get things done with - the more natural-language-ish aesthetic of perl being a strong contributor to that (I'm a pure maths grad but my parents are both Eng. Lit. grads, so I guess I sort of count in the "humanities background" category).
On the other hand, people with non-humanities backgrounds almost always found python easier to start to get things done with, even if they later found perl to be their preference.
Above comments based purely on anecdata; take them for what you will.