Any movie with special visual effects uses software to a large extent to render the graphics and in production pipelines. Knowing how to program, as an effects artist, is like walking into a toy store as a kid. You can’t believe what is available and you have know idea where to start! Effects you used to think were complex, suddenly become understandable. You will begin to understand aspects of your tools that you never dreamed of! Programs that are good to learn as a special effects artist are: Python. Houdini, Maya, Nuke, Modo, and Blender all implement python and allow you to do some amazing things! Python is super easy to use and the support online and in studios is very vast! Later I recommend, if you are an Houdini Artist, C++ and VEX. For Maya artists, MEL and C++.
Start with one computer language. Once you learn one very well you get the others (almost) for free because they are similar.