I started with C=16 Basic, Hisoft Pascal (from data cassette!), Turbo Pascal 3 through Borland Pascal 7, Delphi 2 through 7 ... until I found out in the college that personnell managers blindly asked only for C++ programmers, no matter what kind of issues were to be solved (even though Delphi would be well useful for any kind of "office applications"). Pascal is an educational language family and teaches structured programming well, but is not really relevant in the business, despite its flexibility and universal features.
Later I learned Java as cross-platform and web language, PHP as server based scripting language, VB as simplified .NET programming language ... I even found toolkits for game programming for all those languages, but also their limits; e.g. OpenGL in Java is indeed possible, but only with OS specific bridge drivers.
Each language for its specific purpose.
It is possible to write games even in Batch or PROLOG. But would they be fun to play, in times where a 3D engine is already a minimum requirement? - May depend on the age / maturity of the player, true...
Especially for time critical and hardware oriented purposes, higher level languages are less useful. But lower level languages are more abstract and harder to learn - the price of an efficient result is an intense preparation.
