Extremely Newbie wants to program and pleads to be pointed in the right direction

[Chris]

In article <54abe19d.0202271315.4e699ed0 at posting.google.com>, Anders 
Schneiderman <schneida at seiu.org> writes
>I'd choose Python over Java; it's easier to learn, and it's a much less 
>wordy language.  Every once in a while I'll see something new in the 
>Java world I want to check out, and every time I do, I'm reminded of 
>how much I like Python.  Java might be a good second language.
>
>One more thing.  One of the reason it's easy to learn Python is that 
>when you run into a really tricky problem you can't solve, if you post 
>it to the newsgroup, someone will give you an answer.  I just posted 
>something an hour ago, and already a really nice guy sent me the answer!

Thank you.  These comments are very useful.
I had already had a stab at Java and found it too much of a stretch to 
start with.
Can you do ordinary 2D graphics stuff without VPython - simply using the 
ordinary Python?
-- 
Chris