I'm a decade+ into my software engineering career. I've learned these, in order: Pascal, C, C++, Java, PHP, Perl, Python. Python is my favorite, but I'm glad I got my CS foundation by writing a lot of C++/Java OO code. For me, it's been helpful to learn several languages and then get deeper in each one. The longer you work in any particular one, the more "hidden gems" you discover and the faster/easier you can reach the optimal solution to whatever problem you're facing.