When I read articles like this I feel compelled to respond in the hope that someone can benefit. So take this however you like but it's a bit of advice from so

When I read articles like this I feel compelled to respond in the hope that someone can benefit. So take this however you like but it's a bit of advice from someone who has had a long, fruitful and (at times) happy career in software for nearly 30 years at this point and has programmed professionally at a very serious level in probably nearly 10 languages at this point. Don't worry about which language is the "best" according to the opinions and fashions of the day. Just pick something and go really really deep. If you are lucky enough to stick around in this industry you will inevitably over the course of your career end up programming in a plethora of languages anyway but especially to start with, you will gain a lot from learning how to become a real expert in one thing. Much more than you would gain by flitting from one new hotness to another. For me, I had messed around and done professional work in a bunch of languages but the real turning point came when I decided to really get good at perl[1]. I went through a period where I would go on comp.lang.perl.misc on usenet every day and answer every question I could. Read docs and source code, write little test programs, try things out until I knew and understood the answer. I wouldn't always post my answers because sometimes it took long enough to find the answer that someone else would beat me to the punch, but I got really good at perl in a short space of time. That got me my next two jobs during which time I consolidated that knowledge until I really really really knew perl well (and it's a big language and there is a lot to learn so this is a serious undertaking). The effort involved in doing this - sticking with one thing and learning it really well - has paid off enormously ever since. I have learned and used tons of other languages since then and it is really fast because I really knuckled down and took the time to get good at perl and that taught me a lot about how to learn languages in general. [1] A language I realise as I write this that I have not touched for about 20 years other than to use in shell oneliners when I'm trying to do something in regexes that's a bit too hard to do some other way.