Or you could even have some real fun and try LiveCode, which is now open source and you get export your project to iOS, Android, Windows and Linux and Mac with "the push of a button." There comes a time when you may feel that mucking around in any flavor of C is not something you want to do with your life/time/midnight oil... any more...you have better things to do with your time and your brain. These 4th generation scripting languages are easy to learn, lots of "fun" and have a productivity factor of 10 to 1 over writing in any flavor of C. Elitist programmers think "Hypercard" was for children, but xTalk (LiveCode is the current leading incarnation) is still alive and will be alive long after Swift comes and goes. If NASA can use LiveCode to run satellites, you can certainly use it to write your one-off mobile app. Or like like Yenic says, go for one of the new HTML5/JS frameworks that will run on any mobile device... FireFox OS is going to be big in the not too distant future. They just released in India with smart phones at $US33.00. So if the world is your target, HTML5/JS is a good direction.

He's way out of touch. e.g. mentions Hypercard, but is clueless that this xTalk lives on... big time as LiveCode. (the only language I know. and I am not a "programmer" but I can deploy apps to iOS, android, linux, windows and use the same code on our web server). Mozilla is breaking new ground with a web based IDE that even your little sister can use to do apps. I'm sure others could add to the list here. And he's also blinkered to the whole development process where "normal people" are involved in the front end of usage based design. Creating a really good functional specification (at least initially even if you do Agile,and ongoing feed back if you do use Agile) requires "normal" people be involved. Creating software is more than just about coding a function to fetch some JSON from Googles API. I actually could use some "normal people" to help me diagram apps for edu. They don't need to know how to code anything. Programmers who build without collaboration with "Normal people" may be doing great deep system stuff, but nothing really useful for public consumption. The very idea that because you don't know how to program, you can't be involved in developing software is flawed. It's like saying you can't plan a party because you don't know how to cook.

Try LiveCode... it is the current 'label" for an xTalk that has been around since 1983. It will be around for another 50 years at least... If Apple had not made some stupid decisions, it would be the language of the web today. Easy to code in, productivie, you can deploy to iOS, Linux, Windows, Android both desktop and mobile, use it on the web server. If the recent kickstart campaign succeeds you will able to design in LiveCode and export to HTML5.

Try LiveCode for real productivity and a lot of fun. (livecode.com) They went open source last year and the community version is free. As and xTalk language it has been around since the days of Hypercard. But it's not a "kids thing"... If Nasa can use it to monitor satellites, you know it works. You can code in one language and deploy desktop apps to Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone and Android and use it on the back end as a server language for the web. It has it's limitations, but if you want to build stuff fast and efficiently, there is nothing like it out there.

BTW, not all religions have this problem. The Hindu timeline for the cycles of the manifest universe actually tallies very well with science. Once cycle of manifestation, a "Maha-Manvantara" is said to last for 311.04 trillion years. We have no problem with evolution and, at the same time like our quantam physics man, we also believe in "creationism." But not in the Abrahamic, theistic "one God did it all" sense. And of course the idea of creation on the timeline of the Christian Bible is obviously ridiculous. I'm working right now on some research on the post ice age world civilization that existed at least 10-13 thousand years ago. I think it is rather obtuse to watch you mother "create" a cake and then to turn around and say that there is no intelligence behind the creation of the universe. As one scientist once said... to think that the universe as we see it today arose from chaos, would be like saying that a 747 suddenly appeared inside a hanger full of dust... it just doesn't happen like that. I also spent a lot of time breeding honey bees and the "subset" of Darwin's principles of evolution theories. survival of the fittest, evolution thru mutation, are also true, within that limited frame of reference. You pick the larvae of the hives that are gentle, productive, have a high immunity to disease and make new queens. So, yes, there is also an evolutionary process. It is equally obtuse to say that evolution is not a real factor. At the same time, even in nature today, there are instances of plants, for example, which can only be pollinated by one specific species of flies. The scientific chances of these two creatures from a different sphere of life, actually "matching up" precisely as they do, today... by evolution theory... survival of the fittest, mutation over time, are "scientifically" so small as to verge on the virtually impossible. There are lots of designers at work... at many levels of existence. Of course monist Hindus would also so say that the each of us is a microcosmic form of God... so that means when your mother makes a cake, "God created the cake" I don't mean to preach Hinduism here... just to say that this whole debate looks rather silly from another, more inclusive perspective. And, yes, removing evolution from a school curriculum is another form of "crime against humanity" perpetrated in the name of religion. Sad that anyone would want to cripple young intellects like this, reminds us of binding the feet of girls in China.