I do not consider Java a real programming language.
Its fine to learn the ideas, but C and its Object Oriented supersets is where the meat is at.
A good basic course in C# based on MS .NET using MS Visual Studio is a good place to start.
MS .NET is the only valid competitor in the field with Java for "run on any platform" apps, except that full functionality dot-net only runs on one platform, which makes it the total joke of this conversation. It's just another marketing tool by MS to try to maintain itself as a proprietary monopoly, and they "borrowed" heavily from the Java design.
Enterprise application architecture has been moving slowly but inexorably to web services-based interfaces for the last decade or so, and the overwhelming majority of those services are running on a JVM... which is why Java programmers are a hot commodity at the moment.
