What programming language should I learn?

Question

OK, I was a bit of a programmer long ago.  I was an engineering student and worked in high tech.  I did some programming at work (no big projects) mostly in C, but also some Pascal, Fortran and assembly.  I was pretty good at it, but that was 18 years ago.

I switched majors and became a professional musician.  I'm going to be working on a cruise ship again so I will have lots of free time.  Is there a language that I can teach myself that is in demand?  Something that would not require a lot of certifications?  Something that I could do as part-time freelance work?

I do some HTML, but that isn't useful enough.  I've done some PHP and a tiny bit of Javascript.  I've dabbled in C++.

Any ideas?  I'll probably be moving to Italy if that matters.  It would be nice if it was work I could do over the internet.

Regards,
Kevin Smith

Wertle Woo · Accepted Answer

You're not going to be a part-time freelance programmer, at least not for any money.  You can do that as a web developer but not as a software developer.  If you want to write software anyway, you'll need to start by learning C++.  If you want to write embedded software, you'll need to learn C.  If you want to make webpages, you just have to be able to a click a mouse button through wizards and templates.

Josh · Answer

Well if you get a little better in your Javascript, PHP, HTML and learn some swf. Then I would have to say your ready for doing some freelancer projects

Vincent G · Answer

From the languages that you already have, your best bet as a new skill, due to it being the most popular language you do not already have, is Java.

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What programming language should I learn?

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