Knowing only one scripting and one compiled language is a joke. To be successful you need to be able to pickup new languages quickly, like in a week. Sure, afte

Knowing only one scripting and one compiled language is a joke. To be successful you need to be able to pickup new languages quickly, like in a week. Sure, after a week you're not and expert in any language, or maybe even good at it, but you should be able to read and write it. If you're just starting off, C (or something equivalent to C like Pascal) is the way to go. If you can understand pointers and memory management then you're better then many so-called programmers. After C, you should then learn an objected-oriented language (Java's a good choice, but you could try C++ if you're insane) and a functional language like Scheme or Clojure. A logical language like Prolog may also come in handy. Once you have C, Java, Scheme and Prolog, you're pretty close to unstoppable and picking up anything new is just a matter of learning some syntax, libraries and a few gotchas for each language.