Don't worry about the language. My first was PERL, and it was chosen by the task as I needed to write an application that lived in a cgi-bin and that was all the server had available. Typically one's first app is super simplistic, it performs a rudimentary task and nothing more... mine was a small bulletin board (by today's standard it was riddled with security holes). The key thing though is that every subsequent role I took taught me another language. PERL, C, HTML, JavaScript, SQL, C#, C++, Java, Go, Lua and now Rust. The language can be something that is overthought and can constrain you if you think of yourself as a "<language> programmer", far better to just think in terms of "I solve problems with computers" and the language just happens to be the best choice for whatever problem you are facing.

I care far more about quality code that is easy to maintain, and easy to pick up (for new team members). Optimisations can always be added to easy to maintain code, but if you have optimised early it can make it difficult to maintain or for someone to pick up. Unless I know why I need to optimise something, I'll always go for quality.