[WildUtah]

Lots of important products are designed and developed in Japan and usually are translated into foreign languages quickly but you could get a jump on developing for whatever Sony or Nintendo is doing with Japanese. Japan has a big internal market you might want to do l10n for it sometime, also.

The products designed in Japan (or California) are likely to be manufactured in China. If you want to participate in the final production and delivery of products you program, you'll want to consider Chinese. China's internal market is a desert of failure for software sales, though.

So on a technical basis I'd suggest 汉语 (Chinese) or 日本語 (Japanese). Too bad they're among the hardest written languages in all human history to learn. Save yourself the trouble and pick Spanish, the Internet's third or fourth most popular language. It's not a hotbed of technology but if you're living in the USA, you'll need it soon enough if demographic trends continue.

[byoung2]

After 4 years of studying Japanese, I can speak enough to carry on a conversation with strangers in Tokyo, order food in a restaurant, and flirt with girls. Writing is a different story, though. I learned hiragana and katakana, but nowhere near the 2000 kanji that a high-schooler knows. I doubt most people would learn enough Japanese to be able to work in a highly technical field where Japanese is spoken and written.