This questions trends every now and then on the internet. It’s because it doesn’t have a straightforward, one-word answer. It depends upon you.
In fact, we advise that the first language doesn’t even matter if you want to be a good developer/programmer, or plan to make a career in Computer Science (or related fields). If that’s the case, picking any language (especially out of the big 5) is a very logical thing to do.
That’s because you will want (and probably need) to learn multiple languages in the future.
Even though it’s theoretically true that you can do everything with any language, still every language has been designed while keeping some specific purposes in the center.
So, if you have plans to do something specific before learning multiple languages, then you might need to take a look at what can you do with which language.
Python
To be honest here, almost everything.
Web Development — Django, Flask (Web Frameworks)
Cross-Platform Apps — Kivy
Web Scrapping/Automation — BeautifulSoup, Selenium
Image Processing — OpenCV
GUI — Tkinter, PyQt, wxPython
Data Analysis — Matplotlib, Numpy
Neural Networks/ML — pytorch, tensorflow, keras
The list can go on. You can even make an Android app with Python (using Kivy), but that’s not a nice thing do.
Java
Java is also a versatile language, fully based on the OOP paradigm, considered best for software development.
Android Development — Android Studio
Software Development — JavaFX
Browser Automation — Selenium
Web Application — Apache Struts, Spark
Client-side scripting — jQuery
Cloud Computing — Google App Engine
C
Old, powerful, robust — Three words that very well define the language. C is used to build great things — compilers, embedded software, microcontrollers, etc. Of course, there’s a paucity of libraries in C but it gives you enough access to memory which eventually makes C very powerful.
Also, most of the universities teach C in the freshmen year.
C++
An extension of C. The best thing about C++ is the availability of both pointers and OOP paradigm.
Software like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc., are written in C++.
All the languages have their own beauty. You can’t compare any two languages. As I already have said, they were made for some specific need.
Apart from these four, there are plenty of great languages like Ruby (known for Ruby on Rails), C#, Pascal, Haskell, etc.
We are assuming that with this much information, you will be able to figure out what’s the best language for you. The most important thing is to start. And when we say start, we mean with any language.