I second gamedev its been around for a long time and has some decent helpful people on their forums. I used to use it a lot when I used to do game dev for my own projects.

also checkout garagegames.com great community over there based around their engines which are cheap and easy to use.

As for online degrees I wouldn't bother, most game dev employers are looking for killer demos and knowledge. If you are of an age that you are about to go to college/uni then I would do a game programming related degree for sure.

You could also checkout MS's XNA platform, its in .net but easy to get up and running and also with the creators club you can get stuff running on your xbox 360 if you have one.