Absolutely C++ is a great place to start for programming. This depends on what you are trying to head towards as an end goal as a development platform though. As a basic first language to learn it's great. A lot of the syntax and structure are transferable to other programming languages, it teaches basic OOO (Object Orientated Program also transferable) and memory management skills (that language like Java would lack a little more). Drawback is garbage collection in Java (or javascript) and reliance on the built in memory management such as garbage collectors.
I've worked over 8+ years in software development on embedded and constrained platforms (before moving to architecture) and trying to teach proper memory management to people who started programming on Java/javascript, etc is a constant nightmare. Plus relying on third party vendors to trigger garbage collection at the appropriate times during the right operation on a JS/Node/Java platform has been a big struggle which we sometimes have no control over.
One of the best learning tools when I first started out was kern and ritchies (sp?) C++ books. Nowadays though I point people to
http://www.learncpp.com/
Good luck, let me know if you'd like something more.