I have been using Inprise Delphi as my Windows programming language of choice for several years now, and I have no reason to be tempted by any other language. It is easy to use, produces compact, fast code and provides an interface to all Windows and machine level functions.
For a discussion of Delphi and other choices, have a look at "Why, Oh Why Do I Love Delphi?", an expanded version of an article I wrote for the VITTA newsletter. If you would like to see what Delphi programs look like "on the run", you can download some samples of Delphi in either executable or source form. The samples are not commercially finished and are available free for anyone to use. I hope you will let me know what you think.
A second article examines some of the difficulties of writing programs for Windows. I have included two samples of fairly simple functions. They don't actually do anything useful, they just show illustrate some progamming principles. I have bundled them into both Zip and self-extracting form.
Example One demonstrates an alternative to using loops for a fixed number of input values. Download either Adding.Zip or Adding.exe for the executable, the project files and the pascal source.
Example Two demonstrates the use of a timer to make an image appear for a fixed period of time without interrupting the current action. The self-extracting file is simult.exe and the Zip file is simult.Zip.
Please let me know if these are useful - gdurkin@netspace.net.au