I work with what is appropriate. For text-centric filters, perl really is the balls. But I would never try to write a large application with it. If you are programming a chip, the native assembler might be appropriate. Depends on the project, but as a general statement, Python is probably the best ‘hobby level’ language out there. Once you get it working (easy in Python), you can translate into your own pet language to optimise it if you want.
It just depends on what your hobby/project entails. Which programming language to use, should be based on the above - not just based on the most general/easiest to learn. For instance, if you want to work with the arduino, you're going to need to know a little C.