C# or JAVA

This is up to you. I'm interested that everyone learned .NET :-), which is not exactly a language, by the way. However, I cannot recommend anything certain, without understanding your background and the goals. "I know C/C++" does not tell me much; actually, it tells me almost nothing. Your personal preferences can also play important or decisive role.

What I can really recommend: don't learn just one language and one technology. You always need some diverse experience. This is not even about concrete skills which everyone can always extend. It's about thinking. In my experience, most of the people strongly focused on some narrow field become completely incapable to understand programming and software development as such. I knew a number of people who extensively learned and practiced C++ and had trouble in understanding programming. In a way, extensive learning of some single approach somehow block people from understanding art and science of the programming in general.

—SA

Personnally - C#
But then, I would say that - I use it!

There is an interesting comparison here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_C_Sharp_and_Java[^] If true, it shows two things that C# has and Java doesn't - properties and built in event support.

I use them both so much, I'm not sure how I would work without them...

I'm in for C#; I Came frome gool old C to C++ and moved with the flow to C#. It really feels naturally and where some stuff is hard to do in C++, it's easy in C#. Take the e.g. the UdpClient, much easier to handle than the regular sockets. Note that if you like to have more control, the sockets are still available for you. This is the case with a lot of stuff, the 'general use' case has a easy API but the more complex is available.

When starting on C# i can advice you to directly take a look at the Visual Studio Async CTP. That will blow your mind.
If you combine that with the Reactive Extensions you are sold.

Life can't get any better than that.

Well, almost; having done some embedded programming in the past I got really exited from the .NET Micro framework.
Using your regular C# knowledge to operate specific hardware, just awesome!

Guess these are my two cents.

Cheers, AT

You got enough answer(s) from others but here I just want to give you a link

What is a good free site for a child to learn simple coding?[Long post][^](Contains more than couple of interesting threads which is useful for you)

BTW my call is C# because I like C#

learn Java too.

Java is the base for a lot of open source programming languages. It's a good investment to learn the basics and later on to be able to adapt to other languages.

i would suggest you to go for the c# because since u know c and c++, it would not be that difficult and once used to it, u will enjoy doing c#. all the best.