Frustration learning .Net programming

I am a programmer by trade although my expertise lies within legacy mainframe (Cobol, JCL, etc.). I decided some time ago to go back to school and get instruction in VB & C#.Net and MS SQL. I also have available to me a lot of online classes in C#. The problem with the online classes is they are not in a progression and I do not know enough about C# to know which class to take in a logical progression. The shift from procedural programming to an object mindset has been hard for me and I am getting frustrated with my progress. I was hoping to get some input as to the best way to “learn” a language such as C#? Would learning VB first be beneficial then C#? Should I focus initially on OOP concepts and structure before I learn a particular language? Which is the best way to learn OOP and a language “hands on” (i.e. doing) vs my online work which is just reading/listening and taking a short test afterwards. I feel these online classes could be beneficial it is just the C# platform seems so vast and comprehensive I just don’t know a logical progression to tackle it. I “think” what I am looking for is just an approach to get a solid understanding of the fundamentals of VB and C# so I able to determine where to go from there. Any advice on a way to approach this would be GREATLY appreciated!

Look for a "Teach yourself xxx in 21 days" book by Sams Publishing. These things are awesome and will give you everything you need to know to get a strong grasp and be productive programming in any language.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url…c%23+in+21+days

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url…f+VB+in+21+days

Sams publishing is the way to go….

I used w3schools to learn some markup like html and css. (Their javascript tutorial isn't very good.) As far as C# went, I would recommend Visual C# Express (free) as it is a very comfortable IDE. For tutorials, there are some pretty bad ones out there. Many people tell me about TheNewBoston tutorials, and tell me how good they are. However, when I ask them about simple programming techniques, it didn't go too well. TheNewBoston really teaches GUI concepts like buttons, not physical, hard coding. I honestly found C# really easy to pick up since I had programmed in Java before, and they are very similar languages. http://www.csharp-station.com/Tutorial/CSharp/Lesson01 This link may help you. It explains the basics while actually teaching you something. (It also has support for .NET users which is good.)