I would rate myself as a beginner/intermediate VB.NET programmer - very good at scripting with VBScript. So I haven't really touched on either Java or C++ or any "real" programming since I personally consider VB.NET cheating as you're really just drawing and filling in the gaps with code you can search for online!!!! Could someone recommend to me one or the other ? my destination platform would be both Linux and Windows.
Java is Highly mature language and is used in high frequency trading by big players out there but again that requires playing with GC and you need to be both intelligent and experienced. If coding is you passion go for Java else learn modern languages like python/Golang/Rust
The easiest one
Then java is much easier then c++
C++ code cannot be hacked, while Java and python (not sure) can be hacked or reverse engineered.