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I'd agree with rory here. If you can get a prepackaged system (normally intended for educational purposes) then it could make your simple programming a lot easier. Bear in mind how simple this gets -- I was taught about robots (the turtle!) and basic LOGO programming at primary school. I can't remember the specifics of the language now, but I remember it did the kind of things you describe.
If you don't have the option of such a commerical system, you'd probably want to use a microcontroller like the one OpenLoop mentioned. I have very little experience here, but I know there are quite a few controllers out there with compilers available. Learning C would probably be useful here -- all the ones I've seen have at least a C compiler.
If you're controlling it directly via a parallel port, then you will want to use some low level language (my advice is C), but there are libraries available in other languages for controlling parallel ports. If you're on windows, I know there is part of the Windows API which allows you to control COM ports. Don't know about *nix, but I'm sure some googlging would help. My advice for this is to use C.
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