An overview of the programming languages that will be encountered in a typical undergraduate electrical engineering (EE) degree program:

1. A compiled language (typically C or C++): Often this is the language used to introduce EE's to programming. Fortran falls in this category, but it has pretty much been replaced by MATLAB (see below).

2. An interpreted language (typically MATLAB): This language may or may not appear in the introductory programming course. MATLAB commonly appears in signal processing courses, at least one of which is required for most undergraduate EE programs, and it also appears in control theory, which is closely related to modern power systems engineering.

3. A hardware description language (typically Verilog or VHDL): Every EE program I've seen has required an introductory course in digital logic design, and this course usually introduces one or more hardware description languages.

4. An assembly language (optional): For most EE's, C(++) suffices as a low-level programming language, but for EE's with interests in computer architecture or embedded systems, knowing an assembly language can be useful.