Let's see: I learned Basic because I had a C64 (show of hands: anyone else?) I learned Fortran because my Running Start advisor didn't think 8 credits of C in

Let's see: I learned Basic because I had a C64 (show of hands: anyone else?) I learned Fortran because my Running Start advisor didn't think 8 credits of C in a term would fit into high school credits well and I had to match HS and college credits according to an arcane formula. Ok, I still shiver at the thought of Fortran.... I learned some C years later because it was a "serious" programming language. Not very well though. PHP because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Perl because I wanted to apply for jobs using it., Python because I was unemployed for a bit and bored. Ruby because a customer asked me to teach them (yes, I objected saying I didn't know the language. I was told "that's ok!") and so on. However the things that have made me better have not been knowing all these languages but knowing the human side of the problems I am solving. I taught myself accounting to run my own business, never knowing that it would become my life (I now write open source accounting software). So if I were to give a new programmer advice, it would be: 1) Learn a few languages, because then you can learn new ones easily. 2) Learn about databases, not just SQL, but also as much about the low level implementation as you can. 3) Learn about problems and other unrelated disciplines so you can better solve the problems. So yes, math, statistics, accounting, biology, chemistry, permaculture, etc. are all good things to study.