Speaking of offline, I didn't see perl on your list...... But, I've heard much good stuff about lisp - maybe you should check that out.
If you really want a challenge, go and find out about B It's a prototyping language based on Set logic.
Perl is open source, free, and multi platform. There are certain tasks that can be coded in perl very very quickly and that also run very efficiently. I only just wrote my first perl about a week ago. I needed to run through a 20 something mb def (txt) file and change some settings. If I had written it in vb or c++ it would have just as long to write as it took to pick up a perl book AND write the code. On top of that, the code was only about 10 lines in perl - it would have been at least twice that in vb or c++ There are some really good books out there too. I would certainly recomend the one I bought. If you want the name, just say so.
I'd recommend learning python. It is a great language for rapid development. If you want something a little different try haskell, or if you're feeling adventurous whitespace.
