I'm a bit late to the party, but here's my $0.02.

Every time this question is asked, the general response is a list of everyone's current favorite programming language. This isn't really helpful to you as a new programmer since there aren't any strong reasons for you to start learning with any specific language. Also, most programming languages that you're going to be dealing with are (in a general sense) the same. Once you understand the basics behind writing software, it's fairly easy to pick up the syntax of other languages.

I recommend a few things:

1. Start learning Java. If only because it is currently the most popular language (As of 2015). Because it's so popular, you won't have any trouble finding tutorials and examples, and getting help when you get stuck in the learning process.
2. Learn about Software Design Patterns. I think this is actually more important than learning a language itself. Software design patterns are methods for solving existing problems. They aren't pre-coded solutions, but more of a way to think about common problems you come across when programming. Once you develop a logical problem solving mindset towards software solutions, the coding part comes down to syntax.
3. Learn how to find software libraries that can do the job for you. There are plenty of people who have run across the same issues you have, and have spent a lot of time finding the solution. Sometimes they're nice enough to put out a library that you can use. I've seen some very smart people waste large amounts of time re-inventing the wheel simply because they didn't think to search for a freely available library.

Once you start to gain grasp of the programming mindset, and understand how and why software development/programming works, then I would say you should venture out and pick a language that's specific to your needs.

I see this question a lot in programming forums. What you're going to get as an answer is (mostly) people's current favorite language. When you really get down to it, there isn't any best language to start with. Once you understand how software development works, and how to logically solve problems through coding, learning a different language is (for the most part) just figuring out a new syntax.

I would recommend starting with Java as it's the most popular language at the moment according to IEEE.org. Because it's popular, you'll have a larger pool of resources to help you out when you need it.

I also recommend learning all about design patterns. These are reusable solutions to common problems in software development. They aren't coded solutions themselves, but they are templates that push you in the right direction.

Ive been using the awesome version of amix's Ultimate vimrc. just pull from git, run the install script and you're good to go.

I don't have too much experience with it, but a short while back I did write a quick and dirty web scraper using Scrapy. As I recall it was fairly easy to impliment.

Yes. URL Routing is just another name for it. If you look at the "Real Code" section of that article you'll see that he is taking "$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']", stripping off the base path, and then parsing out the strings that are between the forward slashes.

It's called Semantic URLS. Sometimes called friendly URLS or clean URLs. The web application looks at the URL, breaks it down into its individual parts and fetches the corresponding data. If you were to implement this through PHP, you would parse "$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']".