For good 3d games, C++ is almost always the programming language. Sometimes Python or C#. Aside from the programming, graphics are done with DirectX or OpenGL. If you're brand new to game development (which is sounds like you are) I would suggest starting off making some very simple games. They may not be impressive for other people to look at, but you can learn ALOT through them, and it's a great accomplish meant when it's done.

The first few games I wrote were in VB.NET (because I didn't know C++ yet) and were very simple. A blackjack game against a dealer, and a game in which images of people holding swords (they weren't even animated :p ) ran at an image of your character. You had to click on them to gain a point and send them back to the end of the screen. If they reached you, you lost a point. Simple things like this are a great start (they also give you the idea of how much work a real game takes).

Only once you feel you are very good at C++ programming and have a good understanding of DirectX / OpenGL would I suggest moving onto more advanced things, such as working with 3d engines.

it depends on how skilled you are and, as always, what platform you are dealing with.

I love C#, and did "major" in C++ before I discovered C#.

But let me just spell out the facts here:

1) If you use Visual C# (If you don't have it, get the express edition. Google it.), XNA Studio is pretty good (or so I hear. I just started with my first real game project in C#).

2) Most other freeware libraries out there are for C++, so unless they are Open source and you are willing to translate them into another, more basic language, you have to find one that supports another language.

--Of course, you could just write a library in whatever language that directly accesses the hardware. But unless you are in prison or somewhere like that and have nothing else to do but look up specifications and beat your head against the wall in frustration, this is a no-no.

3) Visual C++ Express has DarkGDK, which is really good, and XNA support. Both are availiable for free from Microsoft.

4) Yes, unless you do like a console game (as in Dos-style), which is almost guarantied to not sell (if that is your goal), it is gonna take quite a lot of manpower and time to do this.
--Think of the Harry Potter Games. They make a new one almost every year, but it is also made by one of the biggest game producing companies in the world, with almost unlimited resources, programmers, level designers, artists, sound technitions, etc.

There you go.

If you are a programmer of C++ and want to program games then there is a very good library for you, that is, OpenGL. I am also programming games and animations using this library, I am new to OpenGL and find it very interesting.

A good game would take even longer

An alternative to OpenGL (if for whatever reason you don't want to use it): DirectX. I believe Ancient Dragon mentioned them earlier...

It's all about what kind of game you want to make. If it's a "next generation" of today's your-PC-does-nothing-else resource-intensive first-person shooters (and personally, I can't think of anything more boring), yeah, it's gonna be mostly C++. And you'd better be some kind of rogue math genius. An independent developer going head-to-head with Electronic Arts and Microsoft in this arena is exactly the same as an independent filmmaker going head-to-head with Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox in the action-packed special-effects-extravaganza summer movie arena.

JavaScript is appropriate as interface implementation for non-Java, non-Flash web-based games whose primary logic is in a server-side scripting language. I wouldn't call it appropriate for anything else. Any game that could be written in pure JavaScript could be written better in Flash/ActionScript.