Given your background, I think you'll enjoy C. The standard Python interpreter is written in C, and the Sun JVM runtime is C. So if you learn C, you'll start to

Given your background, I think you'll enjoy C. The standard Python interpreter is written in C, and the Sun JVM runtime is C. So if you learn C, you'll start to understand the building blocks that came together to make those higher-level languages. After you get the fundamentals down, take a look at the source code behind those runtimes, and it'll make you a much stronger programmer in all the languages you know.