There is a difference between a trend and main stream. Chris wants to learn programming and that's not the same as becoming a hot shot software developer over night, one needs error-proof tools to learn fast and Delphi is just perfect for that purpose. Switching to C thereafter shouldn't be a problem for him, if that's what he wants.
There are dozens of scripting languages out there, and what do they use them for? Software installation, configuration and system administration, mainly. Tell you what, I have this friend who is a senior NASA software scientist at JPL in Pasadena and he and his High Performance Computing team develop software in Fortran (the "new" Fortran, with pointers and such) and also does a few "interfaces" every now and then in Python on Mac OSX. He also "likes" Ruby but that's it. In the financial industry they use Java a lot these days, specifically J2EE, but why? I have lots of friends who are professional software developers and their answer is, "because it scales up well". Have you ever run a Java program on a desktop? Noticed how slow it is compared to a compiled program? The memory limitations on Windows? In the banking industry they don't seem to care but in gaming they do.
So, for a desktop application you need a GUI-based, compiled program. What are your options? C/C++ and Delphi. They teach you C in school because some think it's cool, but it's not, at least not compared to Delphi. Yes, C is powerful, it was originally created for writing operating systems, but you almost have to do C for a living to avoid its pitfalls. Have you written a program in Delphi 2007 for Win32? It's incredibly easy to use and versatile.
My advice, for learning try Delphi, it's more intuitive and as fast as Visual C. And you can develop OpenGL games in Delphi just as well as you can do it in C, check these out:
http://www.glscene.org and
http://www.glscene.com. Also, have a look at this:
http://www.marcocantu.com/papers/Cult.htm. Delphi may be to C what Mac OSX is to Windows but that only makes it more interesting.
But the most important thing to do, as a software developer, is to also specialize in a field other than programming. You will fare better if you have the background required to understand what your employer is talking about.