Download Visual Basic, & other languages.

[iago]

All the suggestions made here are good. 

The problem with Visual Basic is that the software to create it costs $100's (maybe $1000's?) of dollars to buy.  This was done by THE MAN (Bill Gates) to discourage hobby-style coding.  Plus, it sucks and holds you back.  I don't recommend learning it. 

C# and Java are probably the easiest good languages to learn.  They are very powerful and fairly simple. 

Python and Perl are also good languages, although they're a little tricky to learn.  Perl was one of the first languages I learned, and I rather like it. 

Php is good at what it does, and learning it well will give you a good background.  Like any other language, you just need to learn one, then learning others will fall into place. 

Finally, C and C++ are probably the most difficult to learn, but anybody who wants to call himself a "real programmer" has to have strong skills in at least one of them.  Otherwise, you're just a poser.  And once you learn one of these well, every other language (basically) is easy to pick up. 

If you want to impress people, be the first person to master BrainFuck or Whitespace :-)

[Kp]

As far as free languages go:

• C (and C++) are free with GCC, which has a Windows port
• Java is also gratis, and has a free (libre) implementation as GCJ;  a Windows port of gcj is available from the MinGW project
• Perl is excellent
• Python - never used it, but heard good things about it
• PHP - again, unused

Non-free languages:

• C# may be free someday, but it's really not a particularly useful language.  If you really want to get into it, check out the Mono project.
• Microsoft-extended C++ -- various language incompatible extensions, such as try { } catch for SEH.  It's made by Microsoft, so of course it is non-free.
• Visual Basic -- terrible language, would NOT be worth learning even if it was free

If you're just looking to get into scripting technologies, also check out bash.  It's the de facto standard for quick&dirty scripts on Unix systems.  Perl is preferred for more complex tasks.

[shout]

C# may be free someday, but it's really not a particularly useful language.  If you really want to get into it, check out the Mono project.

The C# command-line compiler is included for free as part of the .NET Framework SDK.

SharpDevelop is an open-source IDE.

[Kp]

The C# command-line compiler is included for free as part of the .NET Framework SDK.

Libre or simply gratis?

[shout]

The C# command-line compiler is included for free as part of the .NET Framework SDK.

Libre or simply gratis?

Totally 100% free. (The framework SDK is free too)

[dxoigmn]

If you want to impress people, be the first person to master BrainFuck or Whitespace :-)

For my programming languages course, I did a presentation on BrainFuck. Also wrote a simple IDE (in VB.NET) called "Brainicide" to run brainfuck programs. Allowed me to single step through the instructions and view memory since there were very few programs that had debugging features. Very neat language.\

Edit: Originally, I was going to do my presentation on Whirl, another esoteric language.

[iago]

The C# command-line compiler is included for free as part of the .NET Framework SDK.

Libre or simply gratis?

Totally 100% free. (The framework SDK is free too)

Free if you bought Windows :-P

I'd kind of like to learn C#, actually, I'll have to install Mono though..

[BigFoot]

Thanks for references/opinions, etc guys.  I'm probably going to learn python first.

[Warrior]

[li]PHP - again, unused[/li][/list]

WTF!

[Topaz]

WhiteSpace seems pretty leet, I might go into it! :-P