Java! I may be in the distinct minority here and particularly prejudiced since I started with Java in 98.... Java has the best IDE (eclipse), a slew of open source libraries, Groovy if you have it up for dynamic language syntax and with JIT etc. innovations it's pretty much as fast as C++. I think Java is the perfect OOP trapped inside some slightly ugly, easy to compensate for syntax. Also, easy to deploy dynamic apps with Tomcat, great user community, stable API...