I do not pretend to be an "expert" on computer languages so if anyone 
finds fault in what I write feel free to correct me.
Todays major languages as far as I can see are:
  C++    Visual Basic    PowerBuilder
The new up and coming language is  Java. 
The ancient "Legacy" languages are:
COBOL, PL/1, FORTRAN, APL, and various assembler languages such as
IBM/360 assembler.
Still important for learning is "C". Both Java and C++ use a lot of
stuff first developed on "C". But "C" itself is not now a major
development tool.
None of these languages are dead. Once a large enough number of programs
are written in a particular language you can never get rid of it. These
"Legacy" languages will always be with us to varying degrees because
to rewrite all those ancient programs would cost too much. It's cheaper
and safer to keep these ancient programs healthy using the original
language they are written in. 
Everyone has their oppinions about what language is good, what sucks.
To me, Visual Basic sucks. It creats bloated, slow code. But business
loves it because it's easy to learn, you can write programs quickly in it,
and its Microsoft so it works very well with Windows. 
I love x86 assembler because it creates very small programs that are very
fast. But other say you can do just as good using "C". It all depends on
what you want to do, and what your boss thinks.
And there are a lot more languages too, like Pascal. Pascal used to be very
big for PC progamming and there are still lots of Pascal fanatics around.
There is ADA which is used by the military and government. 
The two major language concepts are the old structured programming and
the new object oriented programming techniques. The Legacy languages are
more suited for the structured methods, but you can use object oriented 
methods with most any language, it's just a lot easier to use object
oriented methods with C++, SmallTalk, and Java. I have seen a book on
object oriented assembly x86 written back in the 1980's. 
And I almost forgot. Some programs are interpreted and some are compiled.
Assembler languages are the lowest level and they only need to be
assembled and linked. They create the smallest and fastest programs but
are hard to write and are written for one specific microprocessor so they
are not "portable". Compiled languages are faster then
interpreted languages, but they also are not as "protable" as
interpreted languages.
Interpreted languages produce very "portable" programs but they are a lot
slower then compiled programs. 
Today, because computers are getting faster all the time, a lot of
businesses would prefer sacrificing fast programs for portablilty.
So now Java is popular.
Java is the big interpred language today. C/C++ are compiled.
Microsoft hates Java. Java programs offer the hope that one day we can
write a program in one language ( Java ) and be able to run that program
on any computer without having to rewite it to suit different operating
systems and different hardware. If this were to happen no one would
need MS Windows. You could run your favourite programs on any operating
system. Sun won the first round of a lawsuite against Microsoft. MS
tried to 'pollute' the Java code to make it unportable. 
Just the same, I doubt we will ever see the 'write once, run anywhere'
concept become reality. The computer industry is just too full of greedy
idiots.

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