Starting point for scripting?

I am looking to get into scripting for user based programs and was wondering what a good starting point would be. Sorry if this seems vague, I am having a hard time finding where to start .

user based programs ?

i think you want to program properly and not script... if so try C#

Javascript is a good language too for even windows applications. I saw a video by the senior programming guy at Yahoo!, I cannot for the life of me remember his name, stating that Javascript is used in Adobe Photoshop. Javascript is integrated with all web browsers so portability is very good. I would also using a full compiled language like C#. I use it exclusively for work and personal and enjoy it very much. The only thing is it will only compile for use on a Windows machine. Java and C++ are compiled languages that can be compiled for multi platform use such as Windows, Linux, and even Mac.

C# is available free from Microsoft. The IDE is called Visual Studio 2005 Express. They also have Visual Basic, J# which is Microsoft's offering of Java again only compiled to Windows though, and Visual C++ which is also only compiled to Windows in this variation.

Hope this helps some!

Which user based program?

In general, I found Lua to be really great as a script language.

Javascript has nothing to do with scripting really... it's for making webpages.

What you want is a scripting language. The classic scripting language that is still used a lot is Bourne Shell (sh). The other two are C Shell (csh) and Korn Shell (not used much now).

Most relatively complicated scripts are now done in more advanced scripting languages. Tcl was huge for a while, then Perl took over. Both are used a lot. Python is very popular now, and the latest hot entry into the market is Ruby, which is fully object oriented. Ruby is pretty cutting edge.

sh is still used a lot because all unix systems have Bourne Shell.