Development Environment

First things first, you'll want something other than notepad in which to write code. Microsoft provides several options for the would be .NET developer, including a free development environment called Visual Studio Express and a more robust (for pay) environment, Visual Studio, which students can actually download for free.

Unlike PHP, Python and Perl, .NET languages (C#, VB.NET and F#) are compiled languages like C++ and Java which requires a couple of other tools be installed on your machine, and an integrated development environment like Visual Studio will come with these things automatically.

Starting with C#

I highly recommend C# as the beginning .NET language for new developers. Learning the language idioms will help later on should you decide that you are interested in other languages like C++, Java or F#. To that end, I have listed below a series of links to web based tutorials and learning resources as well as a brief list of my favorite print resources for learning the language and the platform.

Microsoft Virtual Academy

MSDN and Channel 9

Non-Microsoft C# Resources

Books (in order of Complexity)

In this Series: