I am a freshman in college and doing a software engineering/ finance double major. I've been learning programming on my own and have a good bit of familiarity with php by now. I was wondering what you guys think the most relevant programming language is for financial/investment banking use? I have read this thread: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/13109/books-on-developing-software-for-financial-markets-investment-banksI want to start learning/reading up on a language (the basics not financial/quant stuff) to set a foundation for the future financial/quant stuff. 
Programming Language most relevant to the Financial sector?
programming languages;financial
Working in the financial sector myself (albeit, in Australia), the languages I've seen used commonly among the other institutes I've talked with areAnything .NET (C#, ASP, etc)JavaC++Database knowledge will also come in very handy for you. Try learning some dialect of SQL like MS SQL or Oracle.I know there are quite a few small institutes that also use multivalued DBs for their core transaction systems. This means something likeUniData/UniBasicUniVerse/UniBasicjBaseIf you are really interested in learning specific languages that you can directly use for a job, my advice would to peruse the job adverts in the local area where you want to get a job to get a feel what the financial institutes there are using specifically.However, 2 things to note from this are: What skills they are looking for now could change by the time you graduateIt doesn't matter that much. Learn the fundamentals and you should be able to pick up whatever you need.