I think its handy to have a start in the programming world with C or C++. It being your first language, you will definitely have a good grasp of pointers, memory etc (as they are closer to the machine). Infact, I had taken an assembly language class(sopho/junior year) as well in school where we had to sometimes hand compile an Instruction to Binary. I thought it was really cool to actually see a PSHA (Push register AR) convert to say 1011 1001 and how it triggers the gates in a microprocessor. I hardly use assembly in work or personal projects, but knowing all these memory saving techniques definitely help you in writing good code in Higher Language Languages.