I'm in the process of porting some of my VB and VBA projects to .NET as well. It looks like there is a nice set of self paced videos coming up from AutoDesk The first of which I found
here. I can only find the first three episodes so far.
It looks like you can download the VB labs
here. I'm trying to find the word documents for each lab since I'd prefer not to sit through a movie, but haven't found them yet.
As for an IDE, I started with VB/C# express but couldn't link AutoCAD with those versions for debugging purposes, so upgraded to the professional version.
I haven't decided between VB and C#. I'd like to learn a new language, but the VB.NET syntax is pretty easy to recognize. And since both VB and C# turn out the same runtime, there doesn't seem to be that much advantage to C#.
I'm new to the .NET thing as well, and look forward to poking around here a bit getting back into this community, and getting some input from some of the masters here.
Edit: I just realized that at least one of these links is posted in the sticky at the top of this sub-forum. Love this place.