from a practical perspective which language is the best language

Python
It's literally impossible to prove me wrong, so don't even bother trying.

>>58658638
what are some of your rationales as to why you believe so?

also if you truly believe in yourself, you should be able to list some reasons as to why python 'wouldn't' be the ideal choice

python is for hipsters, redditors, and script kiddies.

so the answer for OP is python

C#.

Python is good if you never intend to progress beyond it but it has too many unique qualities to its design
Java is okay but is bloated and creates a lot of confusion because it's not really true OOP despite trying to say it is.

C# is easy to read, easy to write, and purely, truly, 100% OOP

>>58658656
Python is good for sciencing things too if you're too poor to buy MATLAB or too lazy to learn R or Octave.

>>58658655
Python doesn't have extendability for performance based programs as it, as far as I know, doesn't have any way to manage memory manually.

>>58658707
There's no reason left to use matlab. It's straight worse than python nowadays. Not taking the price into account.

>>58658631
Depends on what you want to accomplish.
Scientist ? Go with python.
Want to easily get a job ? Java.

>>58658789
would there be any benefit to learning python and then learning java using concepts learned through python?

java is for codemonkeys that are meant to be replaced like cogs and nothing more. Java is a horrible language, and a resource hog. Java is a pain to program.
Python is very straightforward, very very simple, it has shitloads of libraries, it's very widely used, and since it's a scripting language it's highly applicable to most tasks you're likely to encounter (perhaps the only exception is with massive amounts of data, with which it's noted to behave poorly)

>>58658811
they are not very different languages, both are imperative object oriented languages. Only that Java has much more syntax than python, and of course there are small differences in implementation between the languages, but you are unlikely to find any concepts in java that are not present in python or viceversa, certainly nothing that'll cripple your learning.

>>58658631
>daily javascript hate threads
>node.js is a meme

javascript
works in the browser so no shitty install
is all of frontend dev
node.js can handle backend
electron is shitty and wasteful but desktop apps wrapped in chromium are possible
frameworks to create cross platform apps
if javascript is a meme, then at least you have a meme job that pays meme money

>>58658868
the main reason i am leaning towards python is that it has a reputation for being good at scripting and automating jobs.

does java have this same functionality?

>>58658811
I think it would be easier the other way around, but they are really not very different anyway. Java is just a bit uglier.

>>58658903
Java is not used at all for scripts because writing quick code is a lot slower to do with Java. It doesn't lack the functionality but it's harder to do.
It's more used for big projects because it's faster than Python.

>>58658903
>>58658926
This, and there's much more boilerplate to write in java.

>>58658631
PHP

>>58658631
>best language to learn for a complete beginner?
>complete beginner
>beginner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX-YfuVQmX8

>>58658707
Good resource for learning R?