I would like to broaden my horizons in programming and ideally would like to end up in game programming but I don't know where to start with this.

I have a few ideas for games I'd like to write (probably in Objective C for the iPhone) but I feel that this will be limiting more than it will be broadening.

Is there a particular language I should look into learning? At work we use Progress (Open Edge) but I'm also fairly fluent with ObjC and Java although I've never done any "proper" work in them. (Ooh, having said that I have written a few proof of concept apps for the iPhone for work and a couple of half finished games in Java).

In terms of public visibility I think iOS programming is prob the easiest way to go with the App Store but that doesn't really help.

I've heard C++ is "the" language to learn for game programming but no one seems to give any particular reasons why? If I was to start learning C++ and write a few programs etc... (trying to expand my portfolio) how would you go about getting them distributed?

Is it possible to start with a company for a small salary and get training on the job?

Any advice would be welcome.

Thanks

Yes it is 99% of the time, some places do employ other language programmers to do tools etc. Scripting in Lua/Python is also pretty much a must for knowing.
C++ as it has more features than C, it's very fast over a managed language like Java and you can do things other languages wouldn't let you do in terms of accessing memory, writing your own garbage collection etc. It's also very dangerous as you don't get those safety nets.

Unlikely to get a place in the games industry with no experience tbh, it's a catch 22 situation. I even had a recommendation from a friend at Codemasters for a job there and couldn't get an interview after graduation