As the title says, I'm new to programming and, well being a white hat and I have a few questions.

I am currently learning C++ through a variety of sources on and offline. Is this a good general language to know as well as one to use to be a white hat?

I intend to use it for basic things, as well as I said before besides white hatting.

I have heard many people mention Python, but I want to know if C++ can be used the same way, if that makes any sense.

any advice/personal experienced is encouraged, thank you in advance!

I think C++ a good start to learn a compiler lang.. i would go into Python, C and Java after... maybe Ruby if you want to write Metasploit plugins.

Knowing the concepts of programming and learning one language certainly helps you move to another language quicker.
In Uni, our studies were focussed around C++. However that didn't stop me from writing a script in Perl to automate patch anaylsis in Solaris. I then moved to PHP (non-security related) and now am trying to understand Python.
So the bottom line is that, learn the language that you are and then its easier to move to another language by understanding their syntax.

You will notice that majority of exploits are developed in C.
Ruby is used to code exploits for Metasploit.
Any scripting language like Ruby, Perl, Python will help you automate few tasks.

I think it all depends on if you had any experience. My first language was
Vb then Java then bits PHP and C I recently went thought 30 videos on Python and once you got the basic down its pretty much across the board exactly the same.

C++ I would not start with this as I personally think its too confusing dealing with memory management and other stuff

never learn C++ because it's wortheless in the security area.

try to learn C you will understand Low Level concept better and more powerfull in dealing with memory than C++

after ending learning the C basics try to pick any script lang such as:
perl, python, ruby, and for sure i highly recommend Python you will know the reason by searching for the following keywords:
IDAPro, Immunity Debugger, Scapy

Thank you

I would personally start off with Python as its very useful and quick and easy without having to worry to much about the code. There was a good book going about on python called hello world there are lots good links and videos about on python.

There some links to tutorials on my page It easy to paste my link then relink it all

http://www.jamierougive.co.uk/tutorials.html

Sure. Why not? It never hurts to learn. I personally would skip the C++ and go straight to python but that's me. I hate programming. If the C++ course is just the basics of programming and you know little about it, it's a good idea.