I have enjoyed some work with Excel and VBA in the past few years, though I am a LONG way from really good at it.

I am wanting to learn a language that I can use to create standalone programs, not necessarily requiring the use of MS Office. I'd like to use something that is at least remotely similar to VBA so my first thought was learn VB6. Then I read VB.Net was better.

I'm looking for advice from people who know. What language could I study that might produce the shortest learning curve for me?

Ron