Howdy folks. I'm looking to learn a new language and would appreciate some help in selecting one I want to avoid any false-starts by putting down some 'musts' and 'must-nots' and mabye you guys could give me some languages to think about and mabye we can whittle them down to 1.

I have a lot of experience in php, and I used to be ok with C and Java. I dabbled a bit with the win32 API in visual basic also. Its been a long while since I've done any programming, and I think mabye its a good time to rethink my language of choice rather than just delve back in to one.

Anyway, here's my list of demands

Must:
...be flexible and reasonably powerful. (in terms of scope)
...be able to access the win32 API. I think I'll be doing a lot of work involving window hooking and API calls.
...be able to learn it relitively quickly (within reason)
...be able to spit out native windows excecutables

Must-Not:
...require stupid amounts of code to perform simple tasks.
...be a very high level language.
...run in a VM or sandbox.

Bonus points if the language uses c-style syntax.

-Hope you can help, guys

C++

Beyond those musts, what are you wanting to do?!

Ruby seems like a good option, if you want a very high level language that allows you to start productive coding in a reasonably short time.

Ruby is a good option, but does not really fulfill the requirement of producing windows executables. As an interpreted language, it requires the use if an interpreter.

Of course, there are ways around it.

http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/index.html

I agree with Amadeus.
Go ahead with C.

your list of requirements are... well limiting.

Basicly you discribed C++ with the exception of, "be able to learn it relitively quickly (within reason)" as windows C++ can actually take a while to master (mostly just due to learning the windwos API or MFC or QT or whatever you are using as a GUI front).

A good option is D. D is much like C# in that it is an attempt to improve upon C++. I have not used it myself but have been looking for an excuse to try it out. It takes many of the modern features found in languages such as LUA, RUBY, PYTHON and brings them into C++... It has to be worth something. There are two big compilers, one by Digital Mars and the other a GNU.

There is Eiffel. The syntax is much more pascal based (I bet this is where all of the old pascal programers who missed the Delphi boat went). But it is supposed to be a rather easy language with very solid Object Oriented programming structure. --I have never met an Eiffel programmer -- but aparently its big in europe.

If I were you I would not discount those interpreted languages. There is a lot of great work being done in languages like Ruby, Lua, Python, PHP, and Perl. These languages become more and more important as people beging to move away from the idea of "libraries" and move toward "engines".

Why spend all the time of programming a new game from scratch with you can use the physics/graphics engine of Doom3 and a scripting language like Lua and create amazing 3D games in 1/10th of the time? There is no significant speed issue since the engine takes care of all the masive-data portions of the code, all you need to do is tell the engine what to do when.

This idea is not just in games. Heck this is what the database world has been doing since the late 80's. Web developers are using PHP/Perl/Python/Ruby etc etc etc. Scripting languages are fast development platforms which are only getting more powerful with time.

Don't get me wrong. I hate microsoft's move away from native code development more than most, but that does not mean that I will not be spitting out some .Net applications here and there.

"The syntax is much more pascal based (I bet this is where all of the old pascal programers who missed the Delphi boat went). "

And there is Delphi. Where it's native code party time on the Delphi boat.
It is a good place to start. Since it fits all your criteria. There is also a library for the Doom 3 stuff already mentioned.
Not to mention a fantastic community developers.

This post has been edited by DesignO: 30 Jul, 2007 - 02:37 AM