Now, as for your question--as much as I would love to recommend Lisp as your first language, I just can't bring myself to do so. For one, it is a difficult language to grasp. As I stated in my post, I had made several attempts to learn it before it finally clicked. And, in all honesty, what made it click for me was learning Ruby and Python first. Once I had these two languages under my belt, I was able to more easily grasp many of the concepts found in Lisp.

Another reason to start with a language such as Ruby, Python, or Perl is because you'll find a larger community of support in any of these languages. If you need help or need a library for a particular task, you'll have more success finding it in either of the three languages I just mentioned.

Finally, since you're a network administrator, you're probably looking for a language that's going to help you more in your day-to-day tasks. While Lisp is a very powerful programming language and is much faster than either Python, Ruby, or Perl for most tasks, for common-place scripting tasks, I still turn to Python most of the time. I am also assuming that you're probably interested in working on the web as well? If so, then you can't go wrong with any of the languages I just suggested. Perl has owned the net for years, and with the introduction of frameworks such as Rails (http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html) and TurboGears (http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/11/08/turbogears.html) , Ruby and Python are quickly becoming the go-to languages for web application development.

In conclusion, I think you're on the correct path right now. Ruby is powerful, easy to learn (and use), and has many applications for day-to-day use as well as web development and just about anything else you can throw at it (In other words, Ruby's great as both a general purpose programming language and as an everyday scripting language). Also, if you're looking for a language as powerful as Lisp, Ruby comes pretty close--both Eric Kidd (http://randomhacks.net/articles/2005/12/03/why-ruby-is-an-acceptable-lisp) and Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/lispfaq1.html) have mentioned this fact in their writings. My advice--learn Ruby first, you'll immediately get a lot of use out of it, then go back and learn Lisp to become a better programmer.

Good luck with all your programming endeavors and thanks for the complimentary comment.

Christopher

P.S.: If you haven't checked them out yet, you may want to take a look at the Pickaxe book (http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/) and a few articles I wrote (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/1904) on using Ruby.