I'm 21 and didn't go to University and hence completely self-taught from tutorials, screencasts, books etc, but when it came to the decision of what languages to specifically learn, I thought, what's going to the most beneficial to learn, ie. for money, exposure, etc... So I did the Sun Certified Java Programmer course, but have never used it since, I learned Objective C to make iPhone apps, I have used it lots, I used PHP for web stuff, I've used it lots.
So my question is, if you chose to learn a specific language, was it for money or for a certain job or because your employer needed you to get up to speed on a language for a specific project? I cant really think of any other motivations to be a programmer? Is that shallow??