Anyone used the RaspberryPi & programmed on it?

[JohnDoeKnow]

As my 1st post on this forum lol, Not really new to computers, just new to the hardware (building a computer, knowing what motherboards and cpus go together etc..) & I'm planning on doing a build soon, and have been watching a lot of Linus videos just because I find them plain interesting (somethings lol) even if I already know the subject of the video. & I realized this was an active forum, so I assumed I could get fast responses and all that good stuff that is hard to find nowadays.

 

Anyways.. 

 

I've programmed before, a little of website development (nothing with python or ruby though.) and some software (mainly vb.net).

I wanted to start my first project on the raspberry pi, and am wondering:

 

1) "Highest"-Level programming language(s) for it 

2) How different is working with the Pi's CPU different from working with that of one like intel. (People have been telling me to cross compile to ensure theres no compatibility issues.)

 

I may have more questions based on that.