and ignore the din of people on the internet who claim to effortlessly, expertly jump among 10 languages as part of their day-to-day. The problem with this isn

and ignore the din of people on the internet who claim to effortlessly, expertly jump among 10 languages as part of their day-to-day. The problem with this isn't whether or not that claim is true, but rather that (as you say) its not the right thing for a beginner. Its perfectly fine (desirable, even, IMHO) for an intermediate-to-expert programmer to know many (different) languages and use a few of them regularly (although perhaps outside of JS and whatever you use on the backend, probably daily is a bit much maybe), but this is all distraction for a beginner. Beginners should focus on learning programming concepts, not on learning programming languages (but one language is a requirement, otherwise you can't learn by doing!) Although, Zeds point about learning the basics of four languages still holds - you can do that and then focus on one.