A buddy wants to learn to code. What lanuage should I have him learn, and do you guys have recommendations for books/websites?

Js, code academy and after practical javascript gordon zhu

A better question would be to ask them what they want to make which will eliminate some options.

@nblackburn good idea

I tend to teach people C# first (even though I'm not a big Microsoft fan) because it uses a lot of important concept in programming that are important to understand first compare to JS where some concept are a bit weirdly implemented and can be confusing for a beginners.

Start of the ground with stuff like blitzBasic or something just to get into what if, else, then, means, what a variable, a string and such stuff is. Codeacademy shrinks your free thinking to much with conceptual stuff (just my opinion) from that basic point an easy transition to any object oriented basic Dialekt (blitzmax or Powerbasic) is easy possible, if he get that concepts then the transition to java, c# or even ecma6 is just syntax. Friend of mine learned from null to oop with that path in less than a year, solved some work tests on job search and now got a junior dev job without study or apprentice

Js

Ask you friend which are of interest will he/she like to venture into Web, Bot, Machine Learning, Mobile etc.
If web I'd recommend JavaScript
Hope this help?