I don't feel that "knowing" the syntax of a language is knowing anything. It's way too easy to learn PHP, C++ or pretty much any language's syntax and still have absolutely no idea on how to program anything useful in them or the underlying concepts behind them of variables, classes, encapsulation whatever.
I'm pretty sure if I thought a bit, I could name 20 languages that I "know", but I can only do anything useful in about six of them maybe?- C++. I learnt the syntax to this when I was about eleven, but, like I said, I had absolutely no idea what to do with it. I could make a thumpin' good "Hello World" program, though. Now it's my favourite language. I don't entirely understand why people say it's hard or why they get the hots over alternative languages (I mean, come on, pointers aren't that complicated to understand) but such is life.
- PHP. The documentation for this language is absolutely outstanding and it didn't take long to learn and actually use for a good purpose at all. Not to mention the syntax is quite a lot like C++'s, and I think one of the main reasons I'd recommend it to someone who wants to get into programming is because there's no strict type checking. $myVariable can be a string, integer and anything else all at once. Yeah that can make problems, but it works for most purposes.
- SQL. This isn't really a language at all, more a bunch of keywords, but that wouldn't stop me from listing it somewhere on my hypothetical CV. That and SQL is so useful hand in hand with PHP. There's bindings for C++, but I don't feel that it has a place in languages like that.
- HTML/CSS/JavaScript. I combine all three of these because I feel it's a little dumb to count them all separately. You can't make very good HTML without using CSS, and your site is a lot like cardboard these days unless you use Javascript with it all. Either way, I learned how to use this ages ago, CSS is the greatest thing on the planet and I seriously will never understand why so many sites still use tables. The freaks.
I've missed off "languages" like XML and the like. I know those, they're useful, but you don't make applications out of them and they honestly don't take long to learn at all.
Languages I have never looked at include Visual Basic (ha-ha), Java and Ruby. Countless others, probably. I have seen a little of Perl. I might like to look at LISP in the future and perhaps assembly which, while almost entirely useless in today's whimsical world of abstraction and building castles in our heads*, would be fun background knowledge. C# is up for a definite fool around with in the future, being as everyone swoons over .NET (and I'd really like to know why).
EDIT: I just read the posts before me more closely. What the? PHP is a programming language. HTML is more of a markup language, but still has a few vestiges of programming concepts (which is why I would feel someone making a big deal out of it would be scraping the barrel).
* Anyone read "The Mythical Man Month"? Then you are not a real programmer, son!
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