Hello,

I'm a graduate Mechatronic Engineer working as an embedded Linux developer. My programming experience to date has been very hardware orientated and as such I've gotten experience writing very low level programs in C or assembly.. I also have some experience with VHDL, as well as writing scientific simulations in Matlab etc..

However, I don't actually know anything about OO design, classes, objects or how to build higher level desktop programs/GUIs. I'd like to add something like this to my skill set but I'm not sure which language to pick up and run with..

I'd like something that plays well in the Linux ecosystem, and is a reasonably natural progression for someone with lower level C experience.

I've done a little reading on Objective C, which seems like a good option, though I'm a little concerned about how tightly integrated it is with Apple.. (Is GNUstep still active?).

C++ is the industry standard I suppose, but it seems like it would be the most difficult progressions. I've even read that "learning C before C++ is detrimental".

Python also seems to be very powerful, though the syntax is a bit of a jump from C.

So I'm looking for opinions. I have no real goals in this beyond learning a higher level language for the sake of broadening my programming horizons (and maybe making a few terrible gtk GUIs along the way).

Python you simply can't go wrong with. (Unless, possibly, you want to develop Windows desktop software).

This is also an exciting time to leap into C++, because a new version of the language has just been released.

Then consider a language from functional paradigm (Haskell, OCaml, etc.).

Or good old LISP.

Both LISP and OCaml also have an OO component in them (and I don't know about Haskell).