Raleigh isn't in Macedonia last time I looked. If Jordan has local experience with dotNET and VFP where the OP lives, that sort of advice is completely relevant to somebody wanting to move "slowly" to dotNET and asking for advice about where to start. "Not with desktop or datacentric apps" is an eminently reasonable answer to the question and does not deserve the sort of response it got from two of you.
IMHO the OP might be well advised to read the following 2 links:
http://west-wind.com/weblog/ (search for "VB.NET rant") and
http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/ . That's the sort of advice that helps at the earliest decisionmaking stage IMHO. Alas, I was too early and there was nobody to offer such advice. Has anything changed?
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
