I've written most of the mechanical aspects of my robot in C++ (native to Arduino DUE) and am moving on to the brains, which is a Raspberry Pi 2.
I'd like to write this in a higher level language than C or C++. I am annoyed at the hoops I have to jump through to deal with strings and for that matter arrays.
I see two main choices, Python, and there is a Python 2.7 and a Python 3.4, and Node.js. What I have at the moment is OpenCV with Python 3 bindings, pocketsphinx, and eSpeak.