"security" doesn't immediately answer the question, at least in my mind.
I'd recommend building two lists: what do you want to do, and what platforms do you want to do it on. E.g. if the answers were "logfile analysis, and other data munging that looks like it" and "Unix-like platforms" respectively, then there'd be little question, perl would be the leader, with its next of kin python and ruby as the likeliest competitors. If instead you want to write secure network programs, there'd be some different choices. Personally, I'd recommend perl for those jobs where its performance is adequate for the job (surprisingly many) and Cyclone for lower-level systems programming jobs. There are other recommendations to be found. If you master algorithms, data structures, programming style, etc. --- the kind of abstracts that are discussed in Kernighan and Pike's books --- then the choice of language will be of less import, you can shop for one whose expressiveness, performance, domain-specific support facilities, and platform availability seem to be the best match for your needs; if you expect to need to invest a lot of time in acquiring a deep mastery of the language then consider the issue of longevity as well. -Bennett
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