I have a little experience with both Visual Basic .NET and C# but not enough to make a proper determination about which is best for my needs/which I should continue learning.
If anyone knows which is generally the best option for web-automation, including both socket based and using a web browser I would appreciate your replies. Almost everything I want to do relates to web-automation and general handling of data so the best language for that specifically is all that matters at this point.
Doesn’t matter. Both utilize the .NET framework, so you simply have two different languages to use to write your code in using the same framework.
What would dictate which is better suited for you, is really “what programming languages do you currently know?” PHP? Java? C/C++? – Choose C#, it will seem very familiar to you.
Pyhton? VBScript? VB.NET will seem a bit more familiar (Python is in the list because of some of the keywords it uses can be found in VB.NET too, but not necessarily C# – for those wondering).
The difference between VB and C# is just syntax. They are both fully capable languages. In fact, they both compile into the same common intermediate language (CIL).
However, C# is far more popular. This may matter when you hit up google for help. You’ll find more knowledge on C# than VB. Microsoft’s documentation does a good job of showing code snippets in both languages, though.
I personally prefer C#. I like the quicker syntax. VB tends to use words where C# would use brackets. Again, totally just personal preference.
All of this assumes you are picking between VB and C#. There are, of course, plenty of other great languages out there.