To be honest the importance of a specific programming language is largely overstated in my opinion.
What matters more is to acquire expertise in the architecture of a program. That is, how to divide information into data structure, split functionalities into routines and libraries, etc.
Once you have learned a programming language to a reasonably advanced level, it is not difficult to learn another one (with a few exceptions).
To get started Python is not a bad choice because it is not too difficult. No dynamic memory allocation and no need to compile it. There is a plethora of libraries available for many applications.
I think Ruby is good as well but I don't know it.
Currently Golang (also called Go) is also very popular.
RE: Question for Programmers