HN user
If I remember correctly, Verisign has indicated they would be willing to create a trusted root level certificate for the government to spoof the ssl of any domain... so I don't know if SSL is enough, unless you only allow CAs you've created or you trust.
I agree with dottrap. Whenever I encourage someone to learn a programming language, it is usually geared toward R or Matlab or some generic scripting language. Anything to give them more control/ability to process the data they are working with. Computers are powerful tools, but rarely do I hear people arguing everyone needs to be a software engineer or a computer scientist.
Much admiration.