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I started out with Quick Basic, Turbo C and Turbo pascal. Like you I gravitated towards VB when it came out, it suited me being a better artist than a programmer. I was always thinking about doing Flash development but luckily never committed to it. I had to grapple with C++ when I was trying to make a game, MekArcade.  MekArcade | SourceForge.net &  MekArcade Windows, Mac, Linux game - Mod DB I can't say I ever came to terms with it and I needed the Cube engine devs to do a bit of stuff to their engine eg add torso rotation to the character model, which I couldn't do, but it never happened. Again, being better with visuals I did learn about 3D modelling and animation. Funnily enough doing that really helped doing sculptural works, understanding the interaction of light, on a form via a surface with it's own particular properties. I could always draw 2D stuff but was hopeless with 3D works, but after making possibly thousands of models over 6 years, I found suddenly I could sculpt. It goes to show that you never really know how the skills you learn might become useful.

I actually don't like Python much, it's slow and the OOP business adds a bit of overhead, nonetheless it's a good place to start for folks learning programming given the resources available for it and the platforms supported. I have found C on the arduinos pretty easy, it's much like the old simple C I remember, not the monstrosity of C++. I was interested in you recommending C#, because that's what a few friends recommended to my son.

I've really only done 'hobby programming' for desktops in recent years with PureBasic. Fast, old school procedural language that compiles to small, assembly language exes on Windows, Mac and Nix boxes. Next version is going to use C compilers which will open up platforms like the Pi, Android and IOS, which is very, very exciting. Makes me glad I stuck with it.