[adrtessier]

The MSFT Visual .NET tools are probably the most visual you can get and still be productive.

One of the things I really like about beginners having interface builders is that they can bridge the context between the code and the user interface in a way that is more meaningful than you get out of even web applications. To get started building interactive prototypes, you can draw first and flesh it out later, vs. learn how to draw in markup/code and then learn how to glue it together.

Some of my earliest memories of finding real accomplishment in programming were using Visual C++ and Visual Basic. While I had written a ton of absolute crap in BASIC and C before, the toy projects were relegated mostly to scripts and whatever text or ANSI interfaces I could dream up. I felt like I had made something accessible to other people. Also, my UI design skills got 1000 times better when I had an easy, accessible way to approach user-oriented design simultaneously with the behavior, and it helped me better learn how to divide my code up in ways that made sense.

[analog31]

Oddly enough, Visual Basic (and before that, HyperCard) got me over the hurdle of understanding OOP, because I got to use objects before I had to create them.