Which programming language should beginners learn first

[D H]

That is why I listed C# under higher order. But C and C++ are most definitely not higher order, functions are not first-class there.

That is a very narrow and extremely non-standard definition of "high order language". By any rational account C and C++ are high order (or rather, high-level) languages. You can take an ANSI-C compliant program from a Linux machine to a Mac, a Windows machine, a Cray, or a Harvard architecture machine, and so long as an ANSI-compliant C compiler exists for that machine, the program will execute on that machine.

 

[Kajahtava]

That is a very narrow and extremely non-standard definition of "high order language". By any rational account C and C++ are high order (or rather, high-level) languages. You can take an ANSI-C compliant program from a Linux machine to a Mac, a Windows machine, a Cray, or a Harvard architecture machine, and so long as an ANSI-compliant C compiler exists for that machine, the program will execute on that machine.

I take it you do not know what the term higher order means from this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_function
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_order_programming

But that's okay, because wiki to the rescue.

Higher order has nothing to do with high level, though invariably higher order languages are fairly high level. Though some'd argue that Lisps are in fact fairly low level due to their homo-iconicity.

It's also as much a paradigm as a language-type.