Java, Javascript, C++ I know this selection seems passe but here's my rationale: First, learn a lingua franca that (almost) everybody knows and has huge librar

Java, Javascript, C++ I know this selection seems passe but here's my rationale: First, learn a lingua franca that (almost) everybody knows and has huge libraries. That would be Java. Java is the English of computer languages, I think. Javascript not only has immense presence (the default selection?) in most web development, and is gaining prominance in developing on mobile devices, e.g. bypassing the whole Objective-C & Cocoa stuff for iPhone and iPad. I don't know it much, but it also seems like an interesting language. The third choice is not that clear, depends on whether you want to have an all-powerful language (C++) or one that excels in concurrency (e.g. Erlang) or want to expand your horizons (Scheme or Haskell, perhaps), etc. etc. I use C++ daily and if I had to do again I would still select it, but I may be biased because I am doing image and video analysis work. As for natural languages: If you are interested in linguistics, I think you've got to learn Ancient Greek, to see a lot of the complexity and mechanisms that has been lost in other IE languages (you can, of course learn Lithuanian or Hittite for even a better grasp, but sources to those are harder to find and the reading material would not be as exciting, I think :-). It was an eye opener for me. As a second choice, I would go with Chinese, for the mind-expanding aspect (did you know that Chinese speakers can roughly classify the meaning of a word even if they don't its meaning, using radicals?) Also, you prospects for a job get multiplied 10x.