I started with BASIC, then shell scripting, then an internally developed language similar to COBOL. Being self taught I didn't really "get" data types, so the big names at the time like C and Java made no sense. PHP was a crutch that allowed me to learn and experiment with functions that were pretty forgiving. The eventual type related bugs I'd introduce into my code where it would work but not correctly eventually helped the concept click in my brain. I still don't get Java.