programming on linux

[Micah DesJardins]

I think how to fit it in depends entirely on what your intentions are.

If you want to do glue/shell/adm stuff, shell scripting and perl still rule
If you want to do application programming, you have a wide range of
tools and toolkits available and I highly encourage you to explore
whatever interests you.

It really depends on what you want to do, but since you were
discussing network apps, for both speed, library availability and the
ability to be compiled anywhere I'd recommend sticking to GCC
compliant C code.  That said, there are TONS of beautiful programs
written in

For kernel / driver programming I believe this is all pretty much C code.

As I understand it, you can link to most necessary modules from any
language that will support C module mix-ins, but the real issue
becomes will your code compile from gcc without modification and (if
you care) how much modification to get it to work with other cc
versions.

That said, most of what I do is more business logic critical than
machine critical.  I do most of my work in php, perl, ruby and bash. 
I think it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish.  I wish
you the best of luck in whatever direction you decide to go though.