apart from what TobiSGD has mentioned...
you neeed to be clear as what kind of application you are trying to develop.
You can develop cross-platform applications (eg. for Windows) on Linux. Have a look at:
QT
it uses C++, if you were looking to use VC++ then QT will be easy to settle into
or have a look at
GAMBAS, its a lot like Visual Basic.
Linux is a very powerful development platform, you just have a explore the right tools for the job...
There are many more IDEs than the two i've mentioned here...have a look around.
Good luck.