If you, however, believe the end goal is being a well-rounded programmer, it's irrelevant.
In the context of "I'm learning to program," I think one should look more to objective B than objective A.
Further, if being a well-rounded programmer were the goal, then people starting with whatever is fine, because becoming well-rounded means they'll get around to better languages by and by. An I'd add that any programmer who wants to consider themself well-rounded should definitely have used PHP or some equivalently beginner-focused language.
Well I didn't say that. Note the not-so-subtle distinction.