Brief explanation of programming?

[Paramount]

Howdy all,

I've been asked by my boss to learn VB.NET (I'm a part time techie at a small online business). I'm happy to do this as I'd like to be able to programme applications and am even thinking about taking it forward as a career. But upon doing a bit of light research myself I've discovered there's many similar languages and it's all a bit confusing. So if anyone has the time I'd appreciate it if you could answer a few of my questions

Is VB.NET any different from other versions of VB like VBx?

What is it most commonly used for, and what else is possible? What could I expect to do from a professional standpoint if I knew this language? What about from a leisurely/hobby standpoint?

Can it be used in conjunction with web development? If so, in what ways?

Can it do the same things as C?

How long would it take for a beginner like me to at least get to grips with the language enough to understand what it's capable of and how I advance myself to achieve that?

I think the business aim is to make something for the tech support team to manage and reply to support tickets. Is this the best method for this?

Any other tips or info I should know? If you were new to this what would you want to hear? Where should I start?

Again, thanks to anyone if you have the time to answer

 

[Paramount]

Wow, thanks a lot for the responses guys.

Ha yes I'd agree with the cheap comment. They're not particularly big and do outsource most of the website dev, but would like to move as much as they can internal and because I've been a loyal (and cheap!) employee offered it to me first. I will beable to get support from someone who knows what they're doing when I get into the full swing of things - my work will be checked and fedback and there's no way they'll let my sloppy learners code go live, but the actual learning will be done by myself in my own time. Plus I'm at uni atm so the chance to pickup some real world experience doing this at the same time can only be a good thing for me. The support ticket app will likely just be the start as I become more comfortable with the language.

I've got no direct language experience but taught myself html and php by looking at examples and picking them apart so if it's possible to do the same here I'm sure I won't find it too hard.

So, first things first - I'll propose C# as this isn't the first time I've heard about it's superiority. I've also been scouring MSDN and have watched a few introduction vids which makes me feel a lot better.

Great, feeling much better and deffo more confident about the whole thing. Thanks a lot everyone. I'll update this with my progress.