I just got A+ certified

I know you'll all scoff and regard me as a scrub, but I'm making /prog/ress towards achieving Satori. It's not much, but it's a start.

I've messed around with Ruby before, but what language would be good to take up seriously and learn in-depth? The most I've done with Ruby is make some shitty text-based games.

I'm not sure if this will impact your suggested language for me to learn, but I'm currently enrolled in CIS introduction classes for next semester, planning on getting into database administration later on. However, I want to learn how to program as a hobby.

I know I'll have to learn SQL some time in the near future, but I'm wondering if there's anything else I should take up.

In before elitist sages, conflicting suggestions, and inane comments.

>>26
Disregard the Ruby hate.
Advising you to read it immediately would just be memetic /prog/rider machismo.
These are obviously and ridiculously wrong, though a complete beginner (like >>1) won't be able to tell.

Do not learn C++ or Java as a hobbyist. Never use them unless you get paid to do so.
Don't pick up 50 different languages and call yourself an EXPERT PROGRAMMER. Specialize in one, understand in excruciating detail.
These are close to right, which arguably makes them more pernicious than the blatantly wrong.

Obviously nobody should learn Java or Sepples as a hobbyist, but you shouldn't use them if you were paid to do it either; they will stunt and, given sufficient exposure, reverse your growth. Even if you're the kind of dipshit who thinks being employed and getting paid is the most important thing in life, you should be aware that being employed as a Java or Sepples programmer will greatly reduce your market value.

As for specialising in one language: it's fine to have one or two go-to languages, but the implication that you shouldn't diversify even as you're focussing on one language is nonsense. There's no point in learning twenty essentially identical languages, but any programmer benefits from picking up, say, Haskell, Factor, and Smalltalk, even if his main language is still going to be FIOC or C, and even if he won't ever know any of those languages inside and out.
A generous reading suggests >>19 was thinking of the kind of ``programmer'' who learns how to write ``Hello, world'' in fifty-three languages just to pad his résumé and thinks that makes him a good programmer; if this is what >>19 was referring to, he should have been more explicit.

>>27
Go away and don't come back.