Wil's right, the first question is what you want to do.
All languages have their place, I think, a couple of possibly surprising examples.
Basic:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=198950[/ur], I love these things, played with them in high school, hook em up to a couple of devices, and code away. It's a high enough level language that people can learn it quickly - yet low enough to convert to machine code efficiently. So it's great if you want to work with microcontrolers (Forth is also popular in this market)
Fortran I hear, handles math extremely well. It was used in the scientific community, (like APL and maybe ADA), and people spent a lot of their time making sure that the core math functions worked extremely well and as a result, better number handling than mainstream languages.
All languages have their place, I think, a couple of possibly surprising examples.
Basic:http://www.gossamer-threads.com/perl/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=198950[/ur], I love these things, played with them in high school, hook em up to a couple of devices, and code away. It's a high enough level language that people can learn it quickly - yet low enough to convert to machine code efficiently. So it's great if you want to work with microcontrolers (Forth is also popular in this market)
Fortran I hear, handles math extremely well. It was used in the scientific community, (like APL and maybe ADA), and people spent a lot of their time making sure that the core math functions worked extremely well and as a result, better number handling than mainstream languages.