I know I shouldn't cite Darth Sabbath by name, and I definitely shouldn't say anything which is criticism after doing so-- but he is soo close to right I can't say anything which isn't a commentary on his answer.
Back when I was in your position, BASIC was an interpreted language, as Python is today. That meant you called up an interpreter program and either issued your commands or wrote a program which issued them sequentially for the interpreter to act on. This meant, among other things, you could learn programming easily because you didn't have to think through how to phrase everything in advance if you had a reference book beside you and a computer in front of you. You could literally learn on the fly what the commands did and what computers do. And you could learn how to organize these commands into programs. This was what BASIC was designed for back at Dartmouth College in the sixties.
Visual Basic is a descendent of these interpreters. It does have a somewhat simple language. Since I don't use Windows, I don't use it and mostly see programs written in it distributed as either source code or exe files -- meaning it's a compiler which you have to write complete programs for before trying to get your commands to work. Python was really not created for beginners, sigh. It's awesome, but it really wasn't created for beginners. Neither of course was C which someone else recommended.
Frankly, I don't recommend Java because it was created for specific purposes. There is another language nobody talks about much called Lisp (for LISt Processing). It's very old, but people still use it. Like Java it is built on some very sophisticated thinking about what computers are, and I'm frankly afraid if you start with either you will come to rely on these ideas even when they are not -- as they sometimes aren't -- appropriate.
On the other hand, another language nobody talks about much these days is Logo, which was always intended as a simple language for beginners -- and children -- which is based on Lisp. Since it is an interpreter, and is still available as such, it offers the exact same advantage as the old BASIC interpreter. The disadvantage is we don't use the Lisp model for programming all that much any more and to move on you will have to make all kinds of conceptual leaps you may not even want to.
C is a highly compacted language which is closely tied to the architecture, both physical and conceptual, of the computers on which it was developed. It is not obsolete, but computers are more complicated and other ways of understanding how they work are equally valid. It is not necessarily the best language for beginners, but it is a good one.
Frankly, if you can afford it, the best advice anyone can offer you is if you have the money, ask at a local university or community college about courses for beginners and at least audit the first programming class (take it not for credit which is cheaper). Use whatever programming language they offer and when it is over see where you can take it from there. Some schools still offer pascal but that is a GREAT language -- for learning how to program. C++ is generally better or easier to learn under somebody's specific direction. So are most of the other languages.
Reading Darth Sabbath was very frustrating. He is just SOO close to right. I can neither agree nor disagree with anything he's said.