I can't seem to find any tutorials or books on learning directx9 or 10 game programming.. msdn only gives me articles on windows 8 using directx11, I'm not ready for that. I want something to help me learn the basics of directx9 or 10 game programming from a beginner's pov. I have 10+ years experience programming in C# and a few years before that doing Visual C++ so I'm not looking for beginning programming. Also, I'm more interested in doing c++. I work with C# all day long and want something different to do when I get home. ;-)

Thanks,

If you're considering programming with D3D10, why do you think you're not ready for D3D11? The API's are extremely similar, and direct use of the D3D10 API is not recommended anymore since D3D11 can run on a D3D10 feature level, among others (1 API to rule them all)

If you do a simple google search for D3D11 tutorials you already come up with lots of good results (the tutorials provided by rastertek look quite decent)
If you're looking for some good reading/reference material for D3D11, I can definitely recommend "Practical Rendering & Computation with Direct3D 11" by our very own MJP and Jason Z, that book was a life-saver to me, especially when it came to the shader reflection API

Good luck

Like Radikalizm mentioned, DX10 is basically dead. DX11 is a superset of DX10 functionality, and if necessary you can target DX10 feature level so that you can run on DX10-level GPU's. It can actually also target DX9-level GPU's as well, although you can't use the full functionality of SM3.0. So that leaves only 2 reasons to use DX9: targeting Windows XP, and/or targeting the full SM3.0 feature set. If your goal is just to learn graphics programming then I really don't recommend it, since DX9 has a lot of old cruft in it that can confuse beginners.

If you're considering programming with D3D10, why do you think you're not ready for D3D11?

Because the msdn documentation says I need windows 8, which is still in beta. I am not prepared to take on the challenge of testing window 8 beta for the sake of learning directx. :-)

Also, I've been reading that directx 11 isn't supported on all hardware, and my hardware is not the latest and greatest. I think world of warcraft cataclysm uses directx 9 so I assumed that's pretty much what my system can handle.

No, you don't need windows 8 to use the DX11 API (I think you're confusing DX 11.1 and DX 11), you need at least Windows Vista and DirectX 9.3 class hardware. D3D11 supports the D3D 9.3 feature level to some extent, like MJP mentioned. The basic requirements are exactly the same as those for D3D10, although you won't be able to use DX11 features on DX10 hardware of course with the exception of some additions they made for DX10 like Compute Shader 4

If you want to support older platforms than Windows Vista I'd say go for DX9, if you want an overall more pleasant experience (IMO) and a more extended feature set, and if you don't care for WinXP or older support (which is a perfectly viable option these days, since WinXP is on its way out) I'd say go for DX11.