> You're looking for Visual Studio vs. Eclipse or .NET vs. Mono etc. in each case I think most see the no-cost alternative as quite obviously inferior.
In manys eyes it is quite the opposite: Netbeans and Eclipse used to run circles around VS. I understand a lot of people like VS and there have been improvements lately bur please don't spread FUD on HN. Thanks.
I don't think it's fair to call the parent post "FUD", both because I think you've misused the term "FUD" and because I don't think the parent post is qualitatively wrong.
Having been a user of all of them for... as long as they have existed (oh God)... Visual Studio has been my preferred software at the time that each version existed. Even the much-maligned Visual Studio .NET 2002 seemed relatively faster and less error-prone than the then-current release of Eclipse. The decision to use Eclipse was usually a cost or programming language issue. You don't code Java in Visual Studio. There were many times, if I could have, I would have plunked down the cash.
Today, I try to setup my projects to be editor-agnostic, but I still end up using VS Express 2013 for Web when I'm working from a Windows machine. When I'm not, I'm not using Eclipse, I'm using something much lighter, like Vi or Geany.
I've used all those products for decades, visual studio since version 6 in 1998. I have never seen anything that would back up your statement at any point in history and I don't know anyone with the relevant experience that would agree with you.
The world is made a better place when people post from a wealth of real world personal experience and cheapened by those that who do not. Please refrain.
In manys eyes it is quite the opposite: Netbeans and Eclipse used to run circles around VS. I understand a lot of people like VS and there have been improvements lately bur please don't spread FUD on HN. Thanks.