Useful languages

[TheBigB]

Hi there,

For starters, please don't start a flaming war on that one language is better than the other. Construct good arguments if you want to fire someone else's statement down.

Now let's get down to business

I finally have time to do anything I want and I decided I'm going to learn a couple of new languages.
So what would be the most useful language for one of the following: Linux programming, ui-programming, hardware interaction?

Currently I'm working on C# and I'm considering learning assembly; thoughts?

Thanks

[RhinoBull]

I would recommend tio learn datawarehousing concept and get familiar with tools such as Business Objects, Pentaho (this one is open source).
They are not programming languages but demand is very high and it's growing.
Also, those tools help to become a better business analyst if you wish to become one.

[Shaggy Hiker]

What's the real objective? Do you want to learn new things, or do you want to do new things and just want to learn the tools necessary for that objective? If it is the former, then I think that dabbling in ASM is a good thing, though I would hesitate to use it extensively. It used to be fun to hand-optimize things in ASM, but with modern processors, the tradeoffs of all the different options is so complicated that hand optimization is not going to be all that successful. At one point, you would look up the instructions in a book, and the timing for each instruction would be listed. If you look at the current instruction set from Intel, the timing has so many caveats that there is no single timing for any instruction. It all depends on what happened before, what else is happening at the moment, and, technically, what will be happening in the future.

As for UI, what do you mean by that? The only definition that I have would suggest that VB/C# would be the way to go, so I think I have a different definition.

[TheBigB]

Thanks for the replies so far.
Let me ellaborate.

What I'm trying to find out is what languages are still used these days, to what extent and for what purpose.
Reason being, I don't have a clue about what I want to do with my future career other than generalizing it to IT.