WebAssembly becomes a W3C Recommendation

Very much yes. One of the reasons C++ is a very popular language is its portability. It compiles for most any platform.

C is kinda the "native" language of Linux, if there is such a thing, in that it's the language of its kernel and of maybe (guessing) 2/3 of the popular GUI desktop environments on it measured by usage, but C++ is also big and (another reason it's popular) interoperates very well with C.

C++ is a major language in use at Google (written under a highly restrictive style guide there, though), if that matters to you. It can be used to write modules and libraries for work on lots of other, higher-level platforms (iOS and Android, for example). It's huge to the point of nearly excluding all other players in serious video game development. It is likely to remain very relevant all over the software development field for quite a long time.

As far as a "learning language", if we're talking scripting languages I'd put Python and Javascript at the top of the list. Javascript's weird in some very un-useful ways (it is very much possible for a language to be weird in useful ways—Javascript mostly is not) but is the language of the Web, which is why it's so popular. Python's friendlier and saner despite a couple potentially-irritating quirks, and has one of the best library ecosystems around. It's a leading language in natural language processing and machine learning, mostly on the strength of that library ecosystem—much of which, as is the case with most scripting languages, is actually written in C++ or C under the hood, for performance reasons. It's also got a huge Web framework comparable to Ruby's Rails, in Django.

My considered opinion on Java is that unless you have a special need for it (Android development, for example) or intend to go all-in on the broader JVM ecosystem, it's better avoided. The strengths of the JVM diminish rapidly as one's needs and interests go beyond it—though it can do nearly anything you need, provided you accept that you'll be using some JVM-based solution to all your problems. Working in it just some of the time is kind of a pain, and it doesn't play as well with others as either traditional interpreted languages or non-VM compiled languages usually do.

If you're looking at learning a compiled, statically typed language I'd go for C, C++, or maybe—maybe—Rust these days.

My advice would be to learn how basic data structures and running programs are laid out in memory, how the stack works, and how things like method lookup tables are implemented, early on, no matter which language you're looking at, all of which are much simpler and less intimidating than one might think. It'll demystify and make obvious Object Oriented programming and recursion and some other things that can acquire an (absurd and extremely false) air of the magical in approaches that don't incorporate those things.

A bunch of Chinese companies is essentially the viewpoint of the current dictator of China, should he choose to weigh in.

Think about how you would do ML with just python. That’d be insane. And thankfully the packages you need are implemented in c or cuda with python bindings. 99% of ml people never see the insides of np, sklearn or tf. But you’re glad these aren’t implemented in python.

Similarly, you’re glad for webgl if you need to do lots of parallelizable computations (cfd, ml, 3d). But glsl was never bashing at js. Just that using js for these task isnt feasible.

Similarly, now you can use fast code from js. Essentially, you have a bunch of matrices use webgl, otherwise wasm. And orchestrate everything from js. Like ml peeps do with python, c and cuda.

For the better or the worse...