Hi Scott,

>Recommendations appreciated as to the most effective way to start climbing the learning curve?

Try to make all mistakes as quickly as possible... ;-)

Seriously, though. The only way to learn .NET and all related technologies is by using them in a project and accept that you would have done everything differently when you look back in a year or two. The course ware is helpful in order to make the first step, as otherwise the VS.NET experience is pretty much like the dot prompt in dBase. However, once you got a first sample application running, implement the features you need and look up solutions as you encounter the problems.

Be ready to re-factor (if you do C# ReSharper is really a great utility to have). Try to recognize problems in your code which might indicate that you aren't implementing a .NET solution properly. Most importantly, though, do not try to write VFP code. If you find that something is unnecessarily complex in .NET, maybe you are currently trying to implement a VFP solution in .NET. This rarely works out successfully and can be a major source of frustration.