Hi,

I would like to build a desktop application to run in Windows. And I am looking to the future... 10 years, if that is possible.

With mobile computing (smart phones) starting to emerge, and a possible future dominance by Apple devices, I would like to try to prep for that too.

25 years ago I learned dBaseII and liked it. For that time is was very feature rich and very powerful. Then I followed with dBase+, III+, FoxBase+, FoxPro DOS and Windows, and finally Visual Foxpro. Really enjoyed that 13 year run. M$ bought VFP and now it is almost dead.

I moved to Perl for a short time, ASP for a short time, and then PHP, where I am now.

Looking back I can say I learned one major lesson - be careful what sills you build and maintain.

So I am needing to learn a new skill to create this simple Windows Application. I was thinking of C++ because no matter where the market goes C will more than likely be useful on Windows, MAC, and Linux.

Then there is Java. The write once run everywhere language. Nice thing about Java is I can build web apps with it as well. As phones become smarter, I suspect there will be some real need there also. Then I also hear the rumor of OSX running on phones. Nice!

So when the day is done and gone I do not want to spend a bunch of time learning a new language and the development tools that go along with it and find I wasted my time.

Any Suggestions?

Thanks in advance!