I agree to an extent, but this shouldn't be construed to mean what I think is a bigger mistake that new programmers[1] make: bounce around from language to language when you're still trying to learn how to program. I made the same mistake when I was learning. The language is (largely) irrelevant, so by trying to learn Ruby when you've barely learned C (vice-versa, whatever), all you're doing is overloading yourself with syntax, when you should be focusing on nailing down the syntax of some language, (essentially) any language, so that you can begin to focus on learning how to program and not what the asterisk means in that context.

[1] Tagent: am I the only one who hates "code" as a verb and "coder" as a noun? It makes it sound so rote, and reminds me of "code monkey." I'll take programmer/developer/hacker/engineer.