What programming language to study?

What programming language to study if you want to program linux operating system? and whats the best programming laguage to study and has more benefit vb?c? java? php? BTW i will just be studying on my own on free time.

It all depends on what you're programming for. Business, Web, etc...

Java for linux and general front end, java jsp for web apps.
Microsoft COM, ASP for business apps. vb, c, php aren't 'effectively' used for business ended programming.

What about good 'ol C++?

I would say that it also depends on how much experience you have already too. Actually that factors in more than almost anything else... cause I personally can pick up languages in a matter of days or weeks now, but thats only AFTER having been taught 6 of them, and becoming fluent in 3 more.

I agree with Shoreguy. A programming language is merely a tool to accomplish a task. You need the right tool for the job.

I also agree with jjino that a beginner's goal should be to learn principles behind programming and then picking up a language is only a matter of learning the idiosyncrasies of a particular syntax.

I would personally recommend starting with Java because for one it is platform independent and its a little more gritty than a scripting language like vb or php. But at the same time you dont need to worry about things like memory management and pointers. It also has a very large group of foundation classes which will assist you.

Perl is a good language to learn very useful for text manipulation anything PHP Does Perl will do and more.

If you want the real money Oracle will guarantee you a job as will SQL - And besides that its not really programming in the strictest sense , easier to learn and way more money

Perl aint bad for beginners though but for a beginner c++ is a bit hard going!

if you wanna develop at website, maybe you can learn some programming at .net, such as c#.
and book is your best friends, dont ask a question about what programming language to study at all time, you just read some books and practice. any programming language is valuable.
show you some nice books about c#:
A Programmer Introduction to C sharp APress.pdf---
http://www.drivehq.com/file/ShowFile...=0&refID=27244
if you wanna get more books, please contact me, my email: Dallas_Mike@drivehq.com