   Advice wanted - where to jump back in?
  I started game programming a few years ago, and was using C++ and DirectX 8/9. I made a few simple demos (spinning cubes and height-mapped terrain and so on) and a 3d Tetris game. Then I sort of drifted away from it, doing some web dev and making a PHP/MySQL browser-based game. I am an SQL developer by profession. I'm keen to get back in to some graphics programming, though I have returned to discover a world where the general impression is that the fixed T&L pipeline is dead and a waste of time now that the programmable pipeline is here. Any advice on what I should look at to get myself back in the running? Should I continue learning about the fixed pipeline (there was still plenty for me to learn there), or would I be better off learning about shaders right away? If the latter, can anyone suggest a few tutorials - the simpler the better, the ones I looked at so far went way over my head. I am also keen to make the move to C# (which presumably now means XNA?) since that is what is used at work, but I am a .NET noob. Any advice on where to start there? I just feel overwhelmed by the amount of things I think I need to know, I'd appreciate someone filtering the noise for me. Thanks.   
  C# with XNA would be a good start -- just download XNA, it comes with some start kits and plenty of online resources to go poking around with. It should be plenty sufficient for somebody with prior programming experience. I wouldn't stress out too much about learning what you've omitted from the fixed function pipeline; focus on what is current instead. The actual theory and fundamental graphics rendering operations are essentially the same between the fixed and programmable pipeline, you simply have more control over the latter.   ;  Don't worry too much about not understanding shaders.  Start with the fundamentals and the fixed pipeline.  Once you understand it, then learning shaders will be much easier!  Everything you learn in the fixed pipeline work will carry over to shaders so you won't be wasting your time.XNA is a good start with a good growing community.  If you want to buy some tutorials on XNA I would recommend http://www.3dbuzz.com/xcart/product.php?productid=52