@gorillapaws – From MadMadMax’s husband:
Python and/or Ruby on Rails are a good start – they are very similar languages.
@gorillapaws wrote “Most job recruiters are morons, so take their requirements with a grain of salt.”
Many recruiters don’t have any understanding of the jobs they are trying to fill—they do not make up job requirements in their heads. They state what their clients want their applicants to have – sometimes the years of experience are silly but that’s what the client is requesting (like asking for X number of years of experience for a language that didn’t even exist until X- 6 year ago).
I was a very Senior Software Engineer and Technical Team Leader and Project Manager for a top 10 Fortune company so I think I know what I’m talking about.
Whenever I read “you can learn most languages in a weekend or so” I instantly know that the person writing that remark doesn’t really know jack about programming. Would you commit to delivering a project to your manager or client with just a week-end’s worth of exposure to a new programming language?
Typically, it takes 6 months to become reasonably proficient in a programming language, and 1 to 2 years of daily programming on genuine projects to truly know the ins and outs of a language.
Of course, some people learn faster than others but I’m talking about the average professional programmer/software engineer.
There is no one “right” language just as there are no “right screwdrivers”. I have quite a few dozen screwdrivers and each project can require several different screwdrivers. The same goes for programming languages.
On some projects, I choose Python. On others it might be ‘C’. Sometimes, just using Linux scripts is sufficient. In other situations, I might use (gasp) assembly language.
No one language fits all projects. No one tool in your shop will fix/build everything in your house & car.