>Hi Pascal.
>What , in yiur opinion, are the obvious choices ?

You asked for the obvious choices ? Then I'd say .net or maybe Java. Are these the best choices ? Hmmm, who can say ? I believe noone can say because you have to work several months with a development environment before you can form an opinion about it. To do so with more than one, you need more than 24h in a day, so comparing is extremely difficult.

I choose for c# and .net and I'm very happy with it ... These are some reasons which made me make this choice :
- rapidly becoming (became ?) a de facto industry standard
- clean model, built on 'best of breed', solid and robust
- will last for quit a while and will keep evolving
- free (visual studio express is free and is really great to get started, of course VS2005 is really what you need as a professional)
- personal taste (not unimportant !!!) (and thats what all the discussion between c# and vb.net is about !!)