Alternate IDE

There are two sides to programming:
1- Writing, debugging, testing and releasing the code
2- Setting up the development environment


The first part is relatively simple, it all depends on what you want to do with your code, how good a programmer you are, what your chosen language can do and how many other people on google are discussing it :-p

The second part is the hard one.
If you're a professional developer (Not me, I'm a tester) there's someone paid to ensure your PC is updated and your software from Antiviruses and Outlook to Visual Studio and .Net Framework is up to date.
I've heard tales of better run software companies with virtualized OS's with every setup known to man stored in an enormous hard drive.
Want Windows 2000 running Visual Studio 2005 with .Net Framework 1.1?
We can boot that virtually in a matter of minutes.
Or a network or disk imagining software so you can boot a real version of any OS you can picture with most localisation and software setups.

But that obviously costs a lot of money.
For amateur developers working at home or for smaller companies that don't have such large resources you're a bit stuffed.


Converting from one version of Visual Studio or from one version of Windows to another can be a nightmare.
Compile errors, subte changes the converter makes trying to help but getting things wrong (Classic microsoft software- ever tried to move a picture in word?).
Not to mention the problem of cost, classic M$, downloading cracked versions means your whole OS might get fried in a later Windows Update.
Urgh.

The open standard alternatives like Python or OpenGL aren't a whole lot better. While it's easier to install for free and arguably easier to write in, they come with their own mess of issues. Not least the lack of recognition in employment.

When I found the VBA capacity of Office I was overjoyed.
A simple, stable, (relatively) freely available integrated development environment that can produce apps that run on (almost) any windows PC without any setup or configuration.
And it's all in BASIC, a classic programming language that most programmers (Myself included) learned some varient of Basic when they were young.

Trouble is, it's not as simple as that.
You can't make a stand-alone .exe in Office VBA.
Macro won't run unless they're digitally signed or you tweak the security settings.
And VB is a proprietry non-open standard language owned by Bill.



My question is, is there a different language that comes with a simple, standardized IDE with a simple language that is easy to make non-trivial applications that run on most windows systems (And ideally can be tweaked to run on other OS's).
Is there some Holy Grail of programming environments that I haven't heard of?