Does anyone know the difference between visual basic and C# and how it all fits into this .NET thing? Is C# just a new and improved Visual Basic? C# looks a lot like Java, but I have never done anything with visual basic.. so I cant compare the two.

Very different languages but they attempt to do the same thing. C# looks like C and C++, just like Java. As a matter of fact, C++ is the root language for both Java and C#. Visual Basic is based on BASIC but bears almost no resemblance to that language anymore (at least not the VAX BASIC I learned in high school). BASIC is not object oriented. What Visual Basic tries to do is become object oriented by using tools provided by other languages (Active X controls). Buttons, text boxes, radio buttons and other widgets are usually written in Visual C++, compiled into DLLs or OCXs and imported into Visual Basic as Active X controls. This method has been surprisingly, annoyingly successful. Sit down with Visual Basic. You get a blank form. Draw a button on the form then double-click the button. You get a code window and a blank Sub Button1_Click(). Here you can define what that button does. Put "End" as the only command in the Sub and you get a button that immediately ends the program. Click the Play arrow on the tool bar and you can even see this form in action. Click the button and the form goes away. While C, C++, C# and Java require some rudimentary programming knowledge, Visual Basic requires a rather large API reference (MSDN for the desperate). Assuming you know what all the controls do, you really don't need to know anything about how they work. You just use them and hope somebody makes a control that does what you need it to do.