Can you say "flame bait"? This type of question almost never has good results; Most people will simply defend thier language and API of choice to the death.

Yes, C++ is still an industry standard. You can also use any other programming languages that meet your requirements. Professional studios will do exactly that - use whatever best meets thier needs. Often this still means C++ simply because they have a lot of experience and/or existing code bases, but noone will stick to a language simply because it's what they've used before, and there are high quality games in C, C#, Java and even some BASIC variants. Hell, if I'm not mistaken Myst was 'written' using an authoring tool, HyperCard.

DirectX isn't cross platform (excepting the fact that it's used on both Windows and XBox). OpenGL is a good choice for a cross platform rendering API, but yes, plenty of engines use abstraction and provide a choice of renderer. Both are excellent APIs.

Once you've learnt one language, it'll generally be a lot simpler to learn any other language, so just pick something and start with it if that's where your question is leading.

There is no best language - but don't work in QBasic. [wink]

To my knowledge, C++ is still by and large the language of choice. C# seems as though it has some followers here, and will make at least some headway. At least around here, it seems like there's a bigger push to use multiple languages. C++ for the lower level rendering code and a much higher level language like python for the actual game. It's not a massive thing, but that seems to be something [at least to me] that is new and gaining a little steam.

I'm not sure about consoles, but for different PC platforms, OpenGL is still the API of choice, though as you note it's not uncommon to abstract out the rendering API.

If you want to be really good at programming, learn C++, Lisp, Prolog, Smalltalk, and any other language you can spare the time on.

If you want to learn the language used by 'the industry' right now, learn C++.

If you want to do business apps, learn C#, Java, VB.Net, or other similar languages.

Personally, I think the best language is Common Lisp, but because it has a small community it is rather lacking in library support. Of the libraries there are, many are de facto standards but you'll have to look very hard to find them.
Because of my inexperience with Lisp, the difficulties associated with learning it, and the fact that I can't use it at work, I currently use C++ for my hobby projects.

blitzmax: the power of opengl, the ease of basic and the organizability of object oriented programming

c++ is still the standard programming language. And in my opinion will remain some time :D. Whenn there are more books, utilities etc... and btw bjarne stroustru works at a improvement of c++ language called C++0x (check http://www.research.att.com/~bs/ )
PS: i don't say that C++ is the best language, just say it is most used :D. i used C++ but i only know C++, pascal and a little BASIC, C# and Java ) anyway i like c++ very much