I have to add my own opinion about Delphi. Delphi is, contrary to the old VB, fully OOP from the beginning. It uses strict syntax (not loose like VB) with very powerful twists, and you can do way more things with Delphi than with VB. Like writing your own components in a breeze. All Delphi components are written actually in Delphi, and you can get the source, and expand them as you want. And it's FAST. The Delphi compiling technology is as good as any C compiler. I've used Delphi since 3.0, I've been using Delphi 7 lately and I'm greatly pleased. Pascal was always my favorite language, but Delphi is much, much better.
Also remember that Delphi is just a product. The language is Object Pascal, and there are free compilers available, a great community, lots of tools and components for it, and it can be used to write cross-platform code quite easily, either if you go thru the "official" course with Kylix, or use any of the free compilers.
The only gripe people have about Delphi is that the human-like syntax makes it look like a too-high level language. Pascal was also developed as a learning language. And that is also one of its good things. You can write complex code and one year later you can read it and understand instantly what it does. But that doesn't mean you can't do low-level stuff easily. And that is one of the big differences it has with VB. I find VB quite limited, but Delphi isn't.
I also consider Delphi a very good first language, specially with the free tutorials available for it.
However, all this is just my opinion. Others will pest or praise at C, or at Java, or at VB, Fortran, Cobol, whatever.... As always
