So you are new. Well, programming language  is just a personal preference. THe main core is common language paradigms and your algorithm. All thing depends on your view/perspective to look at the problem. So, you will completely be lost in this circle, which language to choose and what to make. Here is some information you will find useful: System Programming and Web Programming/Scripting: If you want to develop system oriented programs or solutions. These are projects like building kernel, system tools (like copy, paste, grep, awk), compilers (perl, php, python)... these types of work are done usually in C/C++ etc middle level languages. (Assembly is not preferred, though it produces lot optimized code, but u cannt do OOP, etc in assembly, so large projects are never accomplises). Java is good programming language, through which you can make cross platform applications (can be run on Linux, Windows, OSX etc, without recoding, just compile for specific platform). Python is best in features (afaik).. I will tell u later how. NOw if you want application programming, on Linux, you can use C, C++, Java, Python, Perl, PHP and lot others (yes PHP too, you can pack and make PHP codes executable, google about it). For having GUI (Graphical User Interface), you have many libraries. On Linux, it GTK+ for C, GTKMM for C++, QT for C++ , PyGTK for Python, GTK for PHP and many other too (like motif, tk). But use what modern desktops standards are (GTK+/GTKMM, QT). Now comes Web programming, solutions and scripting. There is HTML all know LOL. (XHTML is now standard). Web applications can be made using PHP, python, Java (JSF, JSP), ASP (hell no), .NET (Mono for Linux .NET) etc. Then there is Javascripts. Its cool, though not much flourished scripting language. NOw you know there are bunch of solutions to a single Problem, "Which Programming Language to use"? And take my word, its all you to decide, just analyze the problem and decide the solution. Give much time deciding other factors too, it will give you more insight of your problem and quality of your judged solution. And never ask this question, haha. Else, others will have to write this much again. As I said, Python is Great, WHY? Python cannt produce final output as size and speed optimized as C and C++ will. But then why python. Because it got many things in its bag. Its powerful because you can write complex solutions in just few lines of codes and it does job well. But since the python interpretor will be always there in middle to execute the task, it will be little slow (but u cannt feel it on modern computers). Also, its like scripting language, write the code in somefile.py and execute it. No need to compile. If u want executable, you can make it. You can do great job. This was about the application programming using python. You can do web-application programming using python too. Just like PHP. but better than PHP, as u can implement the OOP much easily and program like standard, where PHP lacks this style. Python is much performing than PHP. Python is used by Google, NASA etc in various task, other than C++/C. So if u learn Python, you can do Application and web Programming . If you are master in one programming language, you can learn others in short  time. Believe me. And experts dont evolve in little time. It takes 8-10 years for a person to be master or expert. Its the research i read on web, where it was shown how. So have patience. Bye BYe If you cannt decide what now, just stick to C++, whre you will learn the main funda of programming. Concentrate on your algorithms and way of finding solutions. OK