Delphi
The language can be summed up as object oriented pascal for mainly Windows platforms. It has the following strengths:
- Popularity
- Simple but powerful
- Wide array of modules
The popularity means that there are a lot of examples out there and a lot of user contributed work to enhance the language. The language can do most usual things one might want, it requires a bit more code than other popular languages because of its pascal syntax but generally that's no problem. The language features very good transition to low level programming when needed, most windows API functions are supported and when needed one can write it in inline ASM instead.
The best part is probably the was one can quickly use a wide array of modules to build a GUI or use basic functions. That includes things like network communications. Just find the best module for what you want to do (there's generally a lot to choose from) and implement it.
Personally I think that one big downside to Delphi is that it's commercial, one has to buy Borland's compilers.