to code or not to code?

I was wondering if I could get some feedback on some scripting / programming
languages to jump into for a newbie coder. Perl seems like a good choice
because everybody has it and there's tons of support. You can either use it
for web page development or linux admin stuff. I don't know if you can
compile it to a single exacutable under DOS/WIN stuff though. That would be
cool. I've listened to a few people on the list talk about python and it
sounds good but it doesn't seem to have the same amount of support as Perl
does. C++ would be cool but I don't want to have to compile everything
before I can run it. It might be overkill for a newbie. :-) Links on
where to go to learn the code would be nice too...

Don