Originally Posted by
Spring Water
I've got a pretty good handle on PHP, at least enough to build some pretty rudimentary scripts and enough to edit someone elses to make it to what i need it to. That's all well and fine for web-apps, but I've got some ideas that would require a more powerful language.
Which direction would you point the self-learner to start?
Probably Java or .NET (C#) depending on your access to development tools. Java in Eclipse is pleasant and free, and so is MS Visual Studio -- but it's not cheap.