ZBrush Programming Language

[shumway]

I am starting college programming courses in the fall. I have very little in the way of a programming background. Can anyone tell me what type of programming tools are used to build an application like ZBrush or Maya? I understand ZScripts and Mel scripting but what is used on the front end to create the application? I have downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 from Dreamspark but I have no idea whether this is the right tool. I want to develop 3D apps and I don't want to waste my time this fall learning a program that is designed for web pages or databases. Any suggestions would be awesome!

[nebular]

I think it all the high end programing languages like C/C++, C# etc..
If oyu want to develop your own 3d package you may find interesting looking into source code of opens source packages like Blender (http://www.blender.org/), Wings 3d (http://www.wings3d.com/) or Arto of Illusion (http://www.artofillusion.org/).
There are many others but I can't recall more names.

Their source code is free to download and use. It can give you idea.

There's also Sharpconstruct (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=112386). Curently developed as a build in part of Blender, but the old program and source is still avalible.
It is sculpting program similar to ZBrush