It does matter a little bit what you want to achieve. Some languages are more suitable for certain tasks, but there are also a lot of misconceptions. Java, for example, is used a lot to make websites, often with the Spring framework.
Generally speaking, you can do anything with a language. Where I work we have a website written in C++. It seems insane, but there were good reasons for picking C++ at the time.
If I'm forced to answer the question, I say newbie's should pick a mainstream language that has a large support community - you are going to need help in the beginning :)
should I imagine that is a very long code?
The website in C++? That depends on what you consider long! ;)
The programmer who wrote it is extremely good. He even wrote a templating engine and SOAP API for it. It's the kind of project that if you study it, you can learn a lot. It's not perfect (he seldom wrote tests), but the design and implementation is very good.