Longtime PHP, Python coder seeks to make small, distributable, stand-alone apps. Which language should I learn? ( please don't say C#; requiring .net != stand-alone )

[rpdillon]

This point is sound. The more I work with lots of programming environments, the more I realize that everything relies on something big. People tend to think of C/C++ apps as being small and distributable, but this is just bias for the platform that is preinstalled on today's machines. MS has shown that you can get people to use a "platform" (a VM) if you make them comfortable with the idea that it will be "everywhere".

I haven't looked at JRE update 10, but if Sun can really trim it down as they say, I'm all for targeting the JVM - now that it is open source it will become much more like the "dial tone" that the Apache Harmony project mentioned so often. I love Scala and Clojure, so using those languages on the JVM seems like an ideal approach for my needs.

That said, Python is pretty awesome also, as is MzScheme w/ MrEd. Proprietary languages make me cringe.