I am a professional business application developer, not a game developer.
My programming language of choice is Visual Basic, through I am proficient with and have developed applications with many languages such as C, C++, SmallTalk, Java, and C#.
I recently received a very important project request. Though it a request to develop a game, I couldn't turn it down. My grandson wants me to help him develop a computer game.
As a Microsoft MVP I am painfully aware that Microsoft has yet to port its XNA Game Studio Express to Visual Basic, its currently available only C#. While I did feel my grandson could learn and comprehend enough Visual Basic to build a simple game - in fact he has created a few simple programs with VB already - I didn't feel he would grok C#.
So I did some research.
I found that Alan Phipps has created the free XNA Game Engine for Visual Basic 2005. And he's published 2D and 3D tutorials to go with it.
I downloaded the XNA Game Engine and after a quick look I went back to Alan's site and made a donation.
Now I am well into completing the 2D tutorials and my first game.
If you want to learn to develop games with XNA and Visual Basic 2005, Alan's offering is a great way to get started.
I thank you Alan and so does my grandson.
Mike McIntyre [MVP] http://www.getdotnetcode.com