I think it depends on your 'project' as one person said. if you want to write systems software, or desktop apps C/C++ is a good route, however if you want to write Web Applications it's not, you should pick a scripting language. Pick the language for the task first then on preference. so like one person said python, php, perl, ruby, coldfusion are all good choices for web development... you just pick one of those if that's what you want to do. C/C++/Java(C# Windows) are all good for application developement. C is good for Systems development. Perl/Shell is good for scripting.