I use Visual Studio 2005 Pro. I normally only install the C and VB components however, and have only used VB once. I love C++ but my programming history evolved from Atari Basic/Atari ASM to QuickBasic in DOS, then to C in Win9X, and finally C++ in XP. C++ is much better than C, but it is also a tad more complicated to learn. If you're up to it though, C++ is what I would whole-heartedly recommend to any aspiring programmer. I also never recommend VB, C#, or the .NET platform to people since it limits their code to Windows. I believe in hitting the larger audience, including Mac and Linux users. No, I don't personally use a Mac, but I use Linux for everything except gaming!

In C++ there isn't a "subroutine" like in Basic. Each class has various functions, which are referred to as "methods". Overloading involves naming to methods identical to each other, but passing different parameters and/or returning a different variable type. Example below.

class TestObject
{
public:
  TestObject(); //Default constructor
  TestObject(wchar_t*); //Parameterized constructor
  virtual ~TestObject(); //Class destructor

protected:
  void MyName(wchar_t*); //Pass a pointer to a string and store it
  wchar_t* MyName(); //This method would then return the string

private:
  wchar_t *pName;
};

Assuming you wrote code for those methods, you would write two for the "MyName" method. One would return nothing and accept a pointer to a string of UNICODE characters and set the internal (private) "pName" pointer to that string. The other method would return a pointer to said string. They both have the same name, but return different values and accept different parameters.

One final thing to note is that ANSI is dead. If you're going to pick up Windows programming and C++, I would recommend you learn to do it in UNICODE. UNICODE is much better than ANSI and allows you to do so much more with your code, as well as reach people who may use a different character-set than you. Let me know if you have any questions about it.

-Sephiroth