For lottery programming, as long as you don't need fancy user input interface, Python will be good enough.
It has plenty of online tutorials, manuals and examples to learn from. Not to mention huge user base.
I've been programming for decades starting from GW-Basic (if I recall the name correctly), went through about a dozen different languages over the years, and recently (late last year) I switched to Python.
The interpreter was easy to install and, for my personal purposes, I prefer interpreted languages as you don't have to spend time for compilations but run the code outright. Debugging is also easier as interpreter will tell you quickly when, what & how you messed up your code, and it's much easier to recover from errors.
Utility which I use to generate wheel evaluations (and posted results in other thread) was written in Python. The project took about 40 hours and 1/3 of this time went to learning Python functionality and syntax differences. Once passed through the learning stage the programming itself turned out very easy.
The best way to learn programming is to practice, practice, practice. Learn just basics to get started and begin with small and easy projects. Gradually take on more complex tasks. Remember, failures are the essential part of the learning process. Learn good programming habits (and there are many of these) from the beginning. If you run into a problem, don't give up, look for solutions. What initially may look like a mountain of a problem may actually turn out to be just a minor bump on your way (I encountered countless of those). But that's how you learn.
Always save your code. You never know when you may need it again, and it will be there ready, so you don't have to reinvent it.
I always believed that to crack a lottery (i.e. realistically improve your chances of winning) you have to program. Spreadsheets may not be enough as sometimes more complex data processing will be required.
