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You can actually "program" in Matlab but its really as messy as the old BASIC in some ways and hell to maintain (e.g. taking responsibility for a program someone else wrote).
Its forte is all those lovely math packages and display functionality.
First you have to decide --- are you doing this for a living or for fun?
If you are doing it for a living, you need to research what industries use what languages and what platforms. Most of the "heavy-lifter" programmers I know have eventually migrated to Java because it doesn't tie them to a platform. But the realtime and systems programmers end up *nixing (RTOS and embedded fit more easily in that land). If you're focused on user apps or businessware .... the Visual Studio packages may be more appropriate though, really, I'd be ware of any attempt by MS to lock you into *their* environment.
You can learn good or bad practices in any language or programming environment. Some are better at discouraging bad practice.
I still think the best starter language for pure computer science purposes is a subset of C++ but Java has the advantage of all those GUI libraries for instant gratification, so its a toss up.
If you're really hobbying this, you might look at the Lego Robotics kits and the RTOS packages that you can load in for Java or C(++).
Its a few hundred dollars but you can get a good starting grasp on control systems and feedback loops if you want to do programming outside of the "car payment accounting system" type of computing world.
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