Hi all!

Every so often, I find myself missing the fun of building user interfaces and running applications that I put together myself, even if just for the sake of it. It's been so long for me, that the last time I build anything meaningful on the desktop, I was running Windows XP! Since then, I've been focused on the web (front end and backend; but frontend primarily) for the most part, with some CLI programming thrown in here and there.

But now, I'd like to get back into the groove of it, as a hobby, really, but I'm undecided on what language I should pick up, and where I should put my efforts.

So I'm throwing it out to you...

What's your favourite language + toolkit, and why?

If you're into desktop programming on Linux, what's your language + toolkit, and what makes it special for you? In the past, I've played around with interpreted languages for desktop programming, but I've always loved the speed and frankly, the "elite feeling" of compiled languages, such as C and C++.

However, I feel like we've come a long way since the days when these are our primary options (outside of Pascal and the like). So if you were getting started today, what would you choose? Rust? Vala? Something interpreted?

Feel free to share resources in the comments, too - I'd especially love to get into a language with a "noob-friendly" approach to getting started. I find that no matter how far I get in my understanding, the simpler, the better.