I am 18 and have been programming for 2 years. I got my first programming job as a Research assistant when I was 17 and in grade 12 and though that project ended, I am currently working for a security company on a not yet released product as a programmer. I admit, I am addicted. I spend on average 30 to 40 hours per week and I love it.
I would start with C++ and then Java. It is nice to know C++ because I think knowing C++ gives you a better general understanding of what is happening behind the scenes and it demands a deeper knowledge of programming than some more modern languages. I have recently been interested in learning Javascript and Coffeescript myself though.
I will take this into consideration. I am currently parsing for more than one tag and am using separate patterns for each tag I am parsing for. The patterns are not being reused so I will add it to my list of things to do to go through the code and unify all of my separate regexs into a single regular expression.