For beginners to programming, python is often recommended.

You can practice your general programming and computer science skills with python and you will also be able to program for maemo/meego with python.

Here's a noobs tutorial for programming (in general) and python (in particular): http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/

Here's the official python tutorial: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/

And here's an MIT course, including video lectures, in computer science using python (even if they use python, it's not for learning python, but for learning concepts of computer science): http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical...deos/index.htm