If you were to learn a language like Visual Basic, I'd recommend either Visual Basic .NET (also Visual Basic 2005, which is VB .NET with the ".NET" bit dropped from the name), or C# (another .NET language). Legacy versions of Visual Basic (6 and below) are now unsupported by Microsoft, and for good reason: VB 6 came out in 1998. You can pick up a free copy of VB Express Edition or C# Express Edition from
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/. Note that "Express Edition" doesn't mean "for newbies" - they're just missing some enterprise-oriented features. They're also
much more powerful than older versions of Visual Basic.
Another choice, if you're interested, is Java - in fact, the .NET Framework was based on the Java libraries.
Clicky.
Oh, Piz: "limitated"? What the feck? :p