Well if someone asks me then I would never ever recommend him to pick javascript as his first language. Actually javascript is a very different language as compared to other languages, its a prototype based language which is not easy to swallow at first, I have seen many experienced developers who have been into web-development for years using either PHP or Rails even .Net but they are really weak when it comes to javascript. I would recommend you to pick up either PHP (which is really easy to understand) or ruby.

let see what others say