Squeak/Smalltalk is a good choice for getting a feel for OO programming and design. The class library, while huge, has some interesting gems in it.

You would do well to pick up different kinds of languages so you can learn their important ideas. Broadly speaking, most of the "common" languages out there hail from the Algol or Simula camps (C, Pascal, Modula 3, Ada, C++, Smalltalk, Perl, C++, Java, ...).

There's also the Lisp family (I'd probably look at Scheme or Common Lisp (which includes CLOS, with its nice support for OO)).

And then there's the functional languages (Prolog, ML, Haskell) that will provide a totally different way of looking at things.

You might also look at assembly language for a couple of processors (do something with a little microcontroller for kicks), and at Postscript, which is interesting from a language point of view (kind of like FORTH with some data types). And maybe APL or J for another completely different view of languages.

This chart diagrams the history of computer languages and has some links to other such charts.

update: clarified CLOS

In reply to Re: What languages to learn? by bikeNomad
in thread What languages to learn? by kevin_i_orourke

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