[andrewas]

C++.

BASIC was always far to verbose, pascal is a pain in the neck, anything that runs interpreted is a waste of time. C++ is admittedly harder that plain C but then it will run a plain C program so the point is irrelevant.

C++ supposedly has 90% of the efficiency of assembler, but assembler is beyond painful so I dont use it, at all.

It all depends on what you want to do with it though.