My advice for you, start programming on a *nix box in C, or even C++. And use a text editor and a command line compiler. It's the best way to really understand the computer. Please don't start with Visual Basic. As Dijkstra said,
It's just as true about Visual Basic.
Too many people who are interested in programming want to make some cool window pop up with buttons and textboxes and such as soon as they can, but you'll just end up relearning all you missed out on. The only appropriate first program is printf("Hello World!\n");
If you really aren't interested in learning the fundamentals and core of how to talk to a computer, and what you're looking for is simple rapid application development in a Windows environment, at least start with Visual C#, it's a good compromise between Visual Basic and Visual C++.
Or of course there's MIPS.