What is a good desktop programming language to learn for a web developer? [closed]

Question

I'm want to learn a desktop programming language, preferably C, C++ or C#. I'm a PHP/HTML/CSS programmer and I would like to get into desktop applications. I need something pretty powerful and I would like to be able to create applications with Windows GUI's.

What would the Stack Overflow community recommend? Is there any knowledge I should have before diving into these languages?

Answer 1

edit:

A web programmer wants to create Windows applications and you recommend C?

What's wrong with you people?!

/edit

Obviously C#.

C# will be easier to get into and will let you build Windows applications using WinForms or WPF and all the new Microsoft toys in .NET. If you know your way around PHP, you should already be familiar with the syntax, object oriented concepts, exception handling, etc.

I suggest you don't complicate your life with C and definitely not with C++ if all you want is to create Windows GUIs. They do provide a good educational experience and they are useful for more advanced things (cross platform development using other toolkits for instance) but at the price of a steeper learning curve and reduced productivity.

Also, if you are a web developer, C# is the only language among the 3 options that you can (realistically, heh) use for the web. ASP.NET is not a bad framework and might be worth investigating too.

Answer 2

"I need something pretty powerful and I would like to be able to create apps with Windows GUI's."

For rich windows GUIs, I'd be tempted to look at the "xaml" variants: WPF (full desktop) and Silverlight (like flash) - this will give you the latest tools etc, and a lot of styling power.

For this, C# would be the primary choice. Managed C++ is an option, but it's more work.