It's funny because it was precisely how I learned programming: first a bit of Visual Basic, then PHP.

I want to warn people against it, because I think I lost a lot of time along the way doing stupid irrelevant things.

You see, instead of learning the basic stuff like algorithms and data structures, I was writing visitor counters and guestbooks. As a result, in a few years, those who started with Pascal or even plain old BASIC, were already coding circles around me :)

Maybe it's not as much about the language as about having a wise teacher who can push you in the right direction. I didn't have one, unfortunately.

P.S.: on the other hand, I was able to sell my skills much earlier than my peers: I made my first money on php. But I don't think it's important: it's about being a good programmer, not selling you code as early as possible.