Welcome John ... you'll get help here whether you choose java or vb ... there are people who will be willing to help you with your problems... just keep intact.

i would go with either java or c# as they are similar syntax so you can learn the othe pretty quick once your grasp the first.
At the risk of being hounded out of the forum and possibly the planet i would not recommend the vb route. prior to .net vb had a bad rep and unfortunately when vb.net came out some old vb programmers were too lazy to learn true oo techniques and so whined to microsoft to put some extra libraries in there (those of you who remember the beta1 of vs2002 will know what i mean - they werent in there). Those libraries can lead to bad habits and are not available in other languages. (why did they need to have string left put back in? was substring too hard to spell???) The rumor was that C#2 was supposed to widen the divide between vb and c# again but with all the problems they had getting it out in time a lot of things were put off to c#3. So i would stick with java or c#.
Well i will brace myself for the attack by the VB die-hards now

Hi

Welcome to the site

I hope your stay is a pleasant one!!!!!!