differences bewteen C# and VB

[OctoberWind]

A few years back, I went to tech school and earned my Microsoft Certifications in VB.Net and ASP.Net. Since then I have not used either of those two programming languages for anything. What I have learned and become moderately proficient with in the last year or so is PHP.

Now that I'm searching for a new job, I'm opening my searches not only to PHP/MySQL jobs, but also looking at .Net programming jobs. I'm seeing about equal requirements for both C# and VB, maybe even a slight lean towards C# (or even C++).

I know there are some significant differences between the two (more than just syntactically), but considering my recent experience with PHP, would it be reasonable to expect that I could pick up C# fairly easily?

(I'm not looking for an explicit yes/no, since you have no idea what my skill level is, but generally speaking...)

It's hard enough for me to break into the developer market right now as it is, let along changing from "web" to "software" should the right opportunity arise.

[ryanbutler]

I came from a PHP environment into a ASP.NET(C#) environment. It hasn't been too bad. The hardest aspects is refreshing your object oriented principles and understanding design patterns, plus understanding the ASP.NET framework is completely different than PHP. Once you get past those concepts, it shouldn't be too bad. I've give it a year/year and a half to understand the basics.

[OctoberWind]

Thanks Ryan, Did you have any prior experience or exposure to any of the .Net Framework before working with ASP.Net? By the sounds of it, that might be my saving grace, that I've at least had some exposure (however vague and years past) to ASP/VB.Net.

[ryanbutler]

A little bit from a book, but not in an enterprise setting or any real world setting, that's where I'm picking up more complex design patterns.