Something short, hard and brutal. C and Haskell or LISP. Then Python. They both require relatively little time to learn, but are with a very steep learning cur

Something short, hard and brutal. C and Haskell or LISP. Then Python. They both require relatively little time to learn, but are with a very steep learning curve. And the moment you have groked pointers, recursion and monads you are capable of translating whatever is needed into code. Also chances are they are not heavily used in a modern startup. Because when a non technical person decides to become technical - we add a junior developer to the team that just happen to inhabit the body of the designer. And that could be a strain on the already limited resources of the technical cofounders. So you don't need a person that have a habit of "fixing" your stuff to the best of his lack of experience.