In which modern language/environment/framework is programming a joy?
tremendo: Take a look at the Appcelerator/Titanium platform http://appcelerator.org/ it's like Adobe AIR but you can build using Javascript, C, Ruby, and/or Python, UIs in HTML/CSS on top of Webkit. So you can use your existing knowledge, know you have a capable rendering engine by default and build desktop apps that can deploy to Windows, Mac and Linux. And it's Open Source (another difference vs. AIR). It's still in development, beta coming out in a couple of weeks, but certainly looks very promising.Alternatively, if you'd like to try doing some games, there's LÖVE, a 2D game engine in Lua: http://love2d.org/Who knows, either may provide the new air of excitement you're looking for.