All my programming ability is self taught.

Started out in PHP and moved over to Ruby nearly 2 years ago now and love it. Self taught is certainly cheaper and if you pay careful attention to various sites you soon learn the best practices for the language your working with.

self thought all the way!

started on basic for 8bit IBMs back in the 1980's, then for 8088 moved over to Pascal (fu*k knows why not c++) and assembler for DOS, then to delphi for Win3.1 and stopped.

Took it up again in Perl a good few years later, then bragged my way into a PHP dev job w/o ever having written a line and learnt it on the job.

I've not even owned a programming book in my life...

then again -- had i studied properly -- i could have been better paid, who knows...

Me too, self thought.

I've started with the old Qbasic ( primary school )
Then I've moved over to C++ ( high school )
At the faculty ( Computer Science ) I've made all kinds of programming languages: C++ ( again ), C#, Visual Fox, Perl, Java

All this time, I've learned for myself PHP, Databases ( mySQL, msSQL .. )

I learned all my coding and programming skills at the University of Life.

I personally think that either c++ or Java would be the most beneficial. Especially since you don't want to get into web programming, to which ruby is mostly famous for.

C++ will get you the basics as well as concepts such as pointers, references, memory management.

Java will increase your knowledge on the basics of programming as well as some ideas of Object Orientation.

I suppose that even though I'm a Java guy I would strictly suggest C++ as a starting language. It has a trickier scheme to it that will help you learn more about what is going on with other languages as well as teach you the basics of programming.

I learn by myself using internet and college library.

Self taught PHP and a little .net via books and google.
Ive created some real munters of apps before which is why I tend to stick to infrastucture and employ someone to do 95% of my programing work

Learn everything myself using net

DON.

I learned all the basics in school. And I myself enhanced it.