Best language to learn for...

I am interested in what the best language(s) to learn for browser based hacking. I've dabbled here and there with programming, but I never really got into it because I had nothing to actually apply what I was learning too (at the time I was helping with an ABer, but it got scrapped a month in because the website closed). Now that I'm here I want to get back into it so I can make contributions to the community the only problem is I'm not sure which language I should make a go at when it comes to game hacking.

Suggestions?

Honestly, it all depends on what you want to do. My to go language is Python, which is a scripting language. It has pretty much every utility you might need to make programs for browser based games (such as Gaiaonline and Neopets). However, other languages might be more suitable for hooking into games such as Runescape and other browser based games based on Java, Flash, etc. It really all depends on what your purpose is.

My recommendation: Python and Java.

Riddle wrote:

Honestly, it all depends on what you want to do. My to go language is Python, which is a scripting language. It has pretty much every utility you might need to make programs for browser based games (such as Gaiaonline and Neopets). However, other languages might be more suitable for hooking into games such as Runescape and other browser based games based on Java, Flash, etc. It really all depends on what your purpose is.

My recommendation: Python and Java.

Agreed with Python, it's easy to pick up and looks nice to boot. For HTTP, TCP, or a majority of networking related programs I will normally always use Python. I suggest if you do choose to go with Python, get the easy_install tool, then from easy_install get pip. Easy_install and Pip are both basically package managers for Python that make installing new packages, modules, etc very easy. For HTTP related things instead of using urllib and urllib2 I tend to use the requests module, which can also be installed from pip. HOWEVER you should still learn how to use urllib and urllib2 in case it's ever needed.
In all honesty you should start with Python 3.3 unless you absolutely need a lower version of python, which in that case I recommend 2.7 as it's easier to transition between the two. It's always been my opinion to just jump right into a programming language you want to learn. The more mistakes you make as you go on the more you learn.

Depends on what you mean by browser based hacking.

Websites like Gaia Online where the game is actually a webpage/HTML, then you'd want to pick up JavaScript (you'll also need to know HTML/XHTML and preferably CSS beforehand).

Websites like RuneScape or anything Java/flash-based, you'd need something more along the lines of Python or C++ probably.

Mkay so, I am defiantly checking into python as I've heard a LOT of good things about it. Thank you very for the tips Tree and Chief too for adding on about JavaScript.

I disagree with the Javascript comment 1000%. You're incredibly limited in what you can do with those Greasemonkey scripts etc. :p