I'm a programmer with 15+ years experience. I mainly specialize in C/C++, but I know how to program in Java and various other languages. First off, I disagree with syswizard, you can make a very good salary as a programmer. Depending on where you live, and how good you are, you can make a very good living as a programmer, especially in places like Silicon Valley, Seattle, or Texas. The myth of Indian programmers taking US jobs is almost dead. Their salaries are now about $60,000 USD, up from $10,000 USD in 2001. Inflation is running rampant in China and India, and salaries are tremendously high, as are people jumping around from job to job. So it's not cheap to hire in "low-cost" areas anymore. It's getting to the point where it's probably cheaper to hire people in the Mid-West for $70k/yr, and only be 2 hrs away. Giddiyup, do you want to be a programmer, ie. you want to get a full-time job programming, or do you want to program trading algos for yourself, or do you want to program trading algos at a hedge fund/quant shop. These are all completely different things. If you want to just be a full-time programmer, I would suggest starting off with Java. There's probably the most jobs available in Java because lots of business software is written in it. No matter what language you learn, there will be A LOT of stuff to learn. If you want to program algos for yourself, I would suggest Ninjatrader. Ninjatrader uses C# as its language, so you can kill two birds with one stone: learn a real programming language, as well as program your own algos. It's what I use to program my trading strategies, and for the most part it's very good. If you want to program for quant funds, I would likely say you should give up. As someone else mentioned, you need to have a PhD level math and statistic background in order to qualify for a quant job. A programmer for a quant may be a bit easier, but you'd probably need many years of experience and significant expertise before they'd even look at you.