Best Languages to Learn?

I've read that one should pick languages for he wants to do. Are there just like, a few languages, that when learned, would cover pretty much every job?

I'm a programming nub. I've just turned seventeen and I'm only halfway through a high-school Java course. >.>

Java is a good one.  Teaches pretty good OO, and its widely used in business.  Lots of samples on the web, and free development tools (like Eclipse) that work well for cheap students.

The "best" OO language is a heated debate full of zealotry, but SmallTalk had a pretty darn pure impimentation.  Of course, its dead now, but free implimentations still exist out there.  Probably not worth your time to learn, though.

I would, instead, learn a newer dynamically typed OO language, like Perl, Python, PHP or Ruby.  Ruby probably has the cleanest syntax out of them all, but the rest are far standard and (IMO) useful languages.  All of them can be leveraged towards web development as well, so learning them couldn't hurt.

I learned on C++.  Kind of a "throw the students to the lions" approach.  Worked very well for me, but the failure rate was over 50%, so its definitely not for everyone.  C++ is very unforgiving, and a newbie would probably have difficulty with it.

All in all, I would say Java is a good start.  Avoid M$ stuff as much as possible (it leads to the dark side), and give a dynamic language a shot too while you are at it.

Also, pick up some good books.  While you can get lots of info on the net, I find it far easier to learn from a good book.  Good being the operative word here - there are lots of crappy programming books out there.