Learn both. trust me. i had no C++ background and learned C# in a week. It is pretty easy. The reason why should learn both is that you will find source code in one language, but need it in the other. With familiarity with both, you will have no problem translating the code to the needed language. Remember that most of the code you will see between C# and VB.NET will look pretty much the same when it comes to using the .NET classes. you just need to understand the Syntax for each language.