“You need to learn ten programming languages first”

The honest answer

Learning to code definitely helps, but you don’t need to master ten languages before you start. I’d still call myself a beginner in Python, and that’s supposed to be the easy one.

The thing that actually matters is being able to read code and understand what it’s doing. When I started I didn’t know any language at all — I just learned to read it as best I could, and every time I hit a new one I learn enough to get by.

You’ll never know every language as a pentester, and that’s completely fine.