He gave you some advice, what he didn't do was encourage you to learn. He was wrong to discourage you but he provided constructive criticism (minus the part abo

He gave you some advice, what he didn't do was encourage you to learn. He was wrong to discourage you but he provided constructive criticism (minus the part about becoming a journalist) Scripting Languages (Python, Ruby, etc) teach you how to use a language but not as much to understand what's going on in the background. A basic knowledge of C is very good to have, data structures, algorithms, and just procedural programming in general is a good idea to understand to be able to optimize later. Although PHP resembles C somewhat (based on what I've heard) so you probably do have some knowledge of concepts behind C, but I would recommend at least taking a few classes at a university or college, simply because they give you a well-rounded education, and you will learn other nice things such as design patterns. Java is ubiquitous in the college environment though, I would recommended taking a class that explicitly says it's C and then one for C++.