Greetings: I'm putting finishing touches to a very long chapter on software sound synthesis languages in which I've profiled current versions of Csound, RTcmix, and SuperCollider3. IMHO I'd still recommend Csound to a novice, particularly to a programming novice. I prefer the more modern language elements in RTcmix and SC3, but the one is heavily C-like (fine with me) and the other is a Smalltalk derivative. Csound also wins in its abundance of helper applications, e.g., FJenie, nGen, Common Music, blue, Cecilia, Csound Blocks, and others. However, RTcmix will see a new release Real Soon Now, and there may be some more GUI stuff included. SC3 for Linux lacks the neat graphic elements of the OSX version, but it's still quite an interesting environment. I should also note that Csound and RTcmix have no special requirements WRT editors, whereas with SC3 you definitely want to learn how to use emacs. (Note that both emacs and vi have Csound editing modes available to them.)

Finally I would urge the beginner to make a real study of some other language, i.e., C/C++, Java, whatever, along with learning a sound & music programming language. That assumes the time for such study, but consider it time well spent, you'll learn a lot by the inevitable comparisons.