I'm learning to code, and switched from "Learning Python the hard way", to "learn Python programming games" (much much better IMHO for raw beginners) to follow "How to design Programs" and passing to racket. The environment is so much easier to start with, installation, tools (DrRacket is awesome!), deployment of programs (easy to wrap in an exe), very good documentation..

I see the usefulness of Python and I like it, but for my needs, Racket is just perfect. I'm not learning to get a job as a programmer or create heavy production code, just develope some small side projects for fun. I find that Racket helps me with this out of the box easily.

Edit: some mistakes and punctuation.