What's a good language to start with if you want to move from web development to developing desktop apps?

Question

Have experience in PHP, HTML, javascript, and interfacing SQL with the aforementioned. What I'm looking for is something that wouldn't be too far of a leap from those languages mentioned but would be a good place to start as far as desktop applications go.

I've heard Visual Studio Express and .NET are wonderful places to start, but are they free?

Any ideas, resources, or tutorials would be greatly appreciated. :)

Answer 1

I've heard Visual Studio Express and .NET are wonderful places to start, but are they free?
Yes, the Visual Studio 2005 Express is offered free and can be downloaded for free from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/ .

And, C family isn't a very good language to start with (it's leap would b much too high from web design), but to note: C family language is a bit similar to Javascript, but at a much more complex framework. You could learn C later after you're used to programming on other languages.

My recommendation on a language to start with is Python (http://www.python.org/ ) or Pascal (http://www.freepascal.org/ ).
Then you should start learning other languages like Ruby, Perl, Java (different with Javascript), and eventually C-family.

Answer 2

If you know Java Script then Java shouldn't be much of a leap. You can get the Eclipse IDE or the NetBeans IDE for free along with Java.

I use Netbeans and it has prototype applications to get you started. I'm pretty sure Eclipse provides them as well.

Answer 3

Get Java and Eclipse. Both free, both well-supported.

You'll like the gui in eclipse, and Java is sorta closeta php.

Answer 4

No they are not free my friend, but the answer is, C,C++, and C#.

They ROCK!, you can try using linux for programming, cus windows programming is complete utter CRAP!