Hi Savage.  Hehehe...yeah, I also miss those good 'ole days of BASIC.  I learned how to program in BASIC when I used to own a Commodore 128D!  *sigh*  Those were the glory days! I really don't know if there are any free programs for VB.  I know that it is bundled with the Visual Studio Suite and you can probably get it as a stand alone copy either from Micro$oft or some online store.  There are places that you can get it for an educational discount as well. Of course, if you look hard enough I'm sure you'll run into a site that has it for download somewhere...you never heard that from me. Hahaha! I guess there goes that theory of me being anonymous.  

I think a good place to start with an object oriented type of language would either be C++ or Java.  As the program evolution goes, Java came out of C++ and C++ came out of C.  Java is good in a way because it does a lot of automated things for you that you would have had to take care of yourself in C++.  On the other hand, C++ is still pretty much THE language of choice (aside from C) in the industry.  Let me know if you need any help.