Approaching C# and the .net platform...

[StevenB]

Note to high schoolers into programming: if you get programming a bit, particularly object oriented, you just might want to look into C# (or java, they seem related).

Similar, yes. Related, no. C# was influenced by Java and has a lot of similar attributes. Java is open-source and is explicitly designed to run on many platforms (Windows, Linux, cell phones, etc.). C# is still primarily targeted at Windows (surprise!), although people are working on that.

Really, it doesn't matter which GUI toolkit you work with first. They're all somewhat similar once you understand the basic concepts. I've worked with AWT/Swing, Qt, GTK2, and .NET. Personally, I prefer the open-source libraries.