There are few applications where C/C++ is the best language today.

But that does not mean that a Java programmer can not benefit from
having learned one of those languages.

And there are still gazillions of lines of C/C++ code out there
that need to be maintained and enhanced.

Arne

Definitely Java.
You don't want to go memory allocation/deallocation which is the main
subject in C++ and has nothing to do in Python and Java.

I started with Assembler, then it was Cobol, PL/1, Fortran, C, C++
then Java. Perl, Rexx, JavaScript were involved a lot too.
The best language. no questions ask, is Assembler. You can do
absolutely anything in few simple instructions. But then it gets bored
because you have to do this anything/everything again, again and
again. Like determine where is line end million times.
More advanced languages like C do it almost automatically and still
have the same power. I like C.
But you have to carry and know huge primitive libraries like strcpy.
C++ provides OOP and cares about all this stuff. I worked with C++ for
10 years and was proud of myself. I was guru and could find memory
leak in no time. But my all time (about 90%) was spent for such memory
leak finding/preventing. And when Java came I was a little confused.
What should I do when there is no memory management? Where should I
spend my 90% of my time.
And, yes, it seemed a little massive even on the start.

But after a little experience and understanding how it's organized,
how packages work and so on, I feel absolutely comfortable with all
Java libraries, systems and applications.
And it is still almost as powerful as Assembler and has nothing
(almost) to do with memory allocation and as extensible as you wish.
Recently I needed to catch boundary changes for windows. For my
surprise I didn't find such Listener in Java.
First of all I knew for sure where it should be in the standard
packages, so I knew it didn't exist.
Second one - I was able to write my own BoundsChangedListener in few
lines of code and use it as easy as any other standard Listener.

Isn't it wonderful?
So, Java is my favorite language for more then 10 years and I strongly
recommend it.
Of course you can learn other languages and approaches like Ruby or
http://symade.com/ but (I believe) you need to spend at least few
years of hard coding till you start to feel the language.

So, good luck with any language. Just don't waste your time on not
required ones.

Alex.
http://www.myjavaserver.com/~alexfromohio/

That, of course, is the best solution - learn both. Learning Java first
would probably give you more bang for the buck...with Python under your belt
already you'd be up to speed quickly. I've seen good programmers with no
previous exposure to Java start doing very respectable work with the
language within a couple of months. If you use the Java tutorials
(http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/) as your guide you'll have a very
good roadmap.

Since there isn't exactly any one point where a programmer can ease back,
sigh in satisfaction, and say "Ahhh, I have now learned language X", except
maybe for some elite group who works on specs and compilers and core
libraries, at some point it'll make sense to start looking at C++. I don't
myself much like the way I first picked up the language, and were I to do it
again, I'd recommend obtaining a copy of Scott Meyers' "Effective C++" 2nd
Ed. early on. At the beginning and into the middle of your foray into C++,
when you are quite likely not to even know what you don't know (much of
which can bite you), this book is especially valuable. Don't expect to
understand much of it fast...just remember the items discussed and when
you're working with a certain concept in your C++ code, review the relevant
items in the book.

http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/ is also a good resource. And to a
degree not as necessary for many other programming languages, it's not a bad
idea to keep an eye on a decent C++ NG like comp.lang.c++.moderated. Let's
face it, when you have a problem in C++ it can be pretty arcane. Reading the
responses to many questions in that NG can be very illuminating.

I'll second Roedy's comment about researching your primary programming
interests - work or open source or hobby. This will drive your actual
decision. But if it's still 50/50 after looking at that I myself would go
with Java first.

Bear in mind too that learning Java the Language will be a small part of the
whole Java experience. At an early stage you'll want to start picking up
Java API's...a whole bunch of them. This is where the real learning curve
comes in for Java. With C++ on the other hand you can go a long ways on many
projects relying on a mastery of the language itself (not to discount some
of the most important libraries like STL).

AHS