I'm looking to start learning to program, and I would like some help choosing the best programming language for me.

While I would love to start with C++, for the speed and power, I think it's a little too complicated for me to comfortably stick with in the beginning. So, I'm looking for a higher level language that ideally is not managed or dependant on anything. In other words, I want to be able to compile an application that can run completely on its own without needing .NET or any other components seperately installed on the O/S. If there's no way to get around that, so be it, but I would prefer a language that didn't need this.

I'm interested in programming apps for Windows, so speed, power, and flexibility is important - as is 64 bit support.


From what little I know, Visual Basic (not VB.NET) would have been perfect, except Microsoft is no longer supporting it, and it doesn't natively support 64 bit apps.


So, what would be the best choice given the remaining options?