I have very little experience programming so i figured an embedded system would give me a good "ground up" approach to learning some programming. I've heard good things about lua, i was considering ADA (rock solid stability is key for this project) or smalltalk. I'm still in the planning stages of everything involving this project and infact i'm going to build a midibox first to get familiar with embedded systems and circuit design. Some people have made some impressive controllers, and synths with the project.

http://www.midibox.org/ http://www.ucapps.de/

Oh, well, you should try some stuff before you make up your mind, then. Ada and Smalltalk couldn't be much more different.