What programming language are learning or have learned and why?

What's the use of the programming language? What is it mainly for?

I first learnt html, now I just got through experiencing javascript and have moved onto java (doing java applets as of yet). Although I didn't master any of them, I have a pretty good idea of which is all about and how to manipulate each.

Programming languages are for writing programs.

Java is the most portable (can be ran on many different operating systems.) .Net is the most popular, simply because it's the most powerful language for programming for Windows. However, like Java, .Net applications will run on any operating system that implements the .Net framework... but there are few of these, and I think they're pretty much all Microsoft.

Within .Net, there are a few languages to choose from: Visual Basic, J#, C#, and C++... all of which pretty much do the same stuff.

Also, HTML is -NOT- a programming language... it's a markup language... something that doesn't run, but is rather a language of descriptive tags... a very stuctured way to store data. Then you've got your scripting languages... like PHP, Perl, ASP, VBScript, JScript/JavaScript, etc.... which is more like programming in that it contains actual instructions as opposed to just information, but scripts have to be processed each time they're run. Then you've got your actual programming languages, which are compiled into the lowest-level format that the operating system or application framework can directly run.

Something like that.

Personally, for Windows applications, I like VB .Net because of how well it's integrated into the development environment. For mobile devices, I use a text editor to program in Java2 Mobile Edition. I'm not a big fan of writing desktop apps in Java (Sun's) because the windows, controls, and dialogs aren't standard for the operating system on which they're running... they always look funny and unprofessional.

Basic, Cobol, Assembler, RPG I,II & III, PASCAL, VBScript, JavaScript, and C

A language simply provides an easy way of coding things...
instead of writing Assembly which is the closest you can get to raw machine code...you can use a language that will usually compile to machine code....

Java the best option
practice more and more to command

I have trouble saying I've mastered any language... there is always more to learn. However, I would say I'm knowledgable with (in no particular order) C, C++, Java, Visual Basic.NET, Perl, and Ruby. You can also say PHP, Javascript, SQL, and XML if you want to call them programming languages.

They all serve their purpose and for programming in general, I like to think they've all given me knowledge and insight on how to be a better programmer. When I try to do some hobby programming, I usually use C++.