Visual Studio is good if you're just starting out, and it has a nice visual editor too. If you doing Java, IntelliJ Idea has a visual editor iirc, or there's plugins for Eclipse if that's your thing. And for VB, it's possible to write pixels, you just need to find the proper methods to do it (I believe you can override the draw() call on components or something).
And for IDA pro, it's an interactive disassembler for anything binary. It costs quite a bit for the full needed version, but there's places to get it cracked or whatever. If you do get it, get version 6.3 or above since that's what knizz's IDB uses iirc. And to find knizz's IDB for Fire Red, just look in his signature. It should be a dropbox link.