I'd like to jump into the wonderful world of programming.

In the past I took some programming courses in school. These included C, C++, and Python.

And I started to learn PHP about a year ago, and I've also played around with Ruby on Rails.

Unfortunately I never did much with what I learned.

Now I'm looking to jump back in. I currently have a career in IT and consider myself a Linux geek-guru-wannabe.

I'm wondering what is the learning curve of desktop programming (eg C#/.Net) vs that of web programming (eg PHP/RoR/Javascript)?

And how long does it take to become a Jr Level developer on either platform?

I mainly ask because it seems that there are a million different frameworks and languages for web development these days.

Whereas if you develop on the desktop (Windows) environment, the primary language used is C# with the .Net framework.

Are there many paid opportunities out there for people who have experience developing on a *nix GUI desktop environment?

Any advice for if you were in my shoes?