Let me ask something -- have you tried turning off Red Box Capture mode for regions (see Selection Capture Options tab); the non-redbox fixed size capture follows the cursor and so shouldn't present this issue.

I'll be at gencon again this year (2022) if anyone else is going!

I'm not an expert in this but some quick replies:

Unlike other Microsoft specific languages like "Visual Basic", I believe these days there is really just C# and I don't think people talk about "visual" C# much these days, and there is no reason you need to think about it like that.  The language is just C#.

Now Visual Studio is a fine IDE editor and development environment for C# coding but there are others that may be less overwheleming.  I certainly find Visual Studio intimidating though I do use it sometimes.
You mention Visual Studio 2017.. I believe the current free one is 2019, and I'm not sure if there would be any reason not to use that.

The one thing to keep in mind perhaps is that C# is essentially cross platform now, so that you can code on windows but use on mac/linux, except that there are some libraries and tools that are only available on windows.  When considering what tools and libraries to use, I would suggest favoring those that are cross platform compatible.

There are definitely tools and libraries for writing C# code that can be easily translated to different languages.