Everyone fails to mention now much more advanced and nicer developing in VS is compared to any other platform. It's worth the money for a copy if you're a serious developer looking to use .NET, it's worth it even more now that there is little initial overhead.
No, I don't work exclusively in .NET, I work in a variety of platforms, but now I have yet another service to offer clients and potential clients that is cost effective.
Does everyone think that no matter what you're automatically locked into having only one stack to work from? Why not use whatever is ideal for the job at hand?
EDIT: Also, you don't have to hate on Microsoft anymore, that's very 2003, instead of focusing on what is the negative, let's instead consider the positive moves they've made, and the quality development environment they've come up with.
Yes, yes of course it's a matter of personal opinion. How much time have you spent in VS though, out of curiosity?
I worded that post very poorly, but the point still stands that the integration, power and seamless feel to debugging in VS is unlike any other solution I've seen or used.
Don't forget I use rails for almost all of my personal development, I love the environment and framework, BUT, tool for tool comparison after working fairly extensively with both, to me, it just doesn't have the same level of detail and polish.
I don't get why people are so defensive of their environments, or why there is such bias and hate for the different environments.
Currently trying to learn asp.net after a long and happy career in ruby on rails, django, grails, codeigniter based solutions.
Find it very hard to believe you seriously think people actually "prefer" this? But I guess that just illustrates perfectly the fact that is entirely a matter of opinion, which is probably why it isn't often mentioned :)
I feel your pain, the company I got my programming start with was locked into the Microsoft stack already so I was really motivated to use .NET to get a leg up.
And yes, I honestly can't stand webforms, the other person that replied here was spot on, the MVC framework is what you want, there is still a learning curve to the environment like anything else, but when it really starts to shine is the debugging, really, that's what I feel personally is the most power aspect of VS. The debugging is simply lightyears beyond using a terminal debugger to me.
Of course you're right, and I worded my initial post a little wrong, it's always a matter of opinion and what you're used to, but even after using multiple frameworks, nothing feels quite as integrated and polished to me as the VS environment.
If you can, go with ASP.NET MVC or MonoRail - "regular" ASP.NET will be probably be frustrating given your background. ASP.NET makes it difficult to control the generated html and js, and likes to pretend the web is stateless (viewstate).
No, I don't work exclusively in .NET, I work in a variety of platforms, but now I have yet another service to offer clients and potential clients that is cost effective.
Does everyone think that no matter what you're automatically locked into having only one stack to work from? Why not use whatever is ideal for the job at hand?
EDIT: Also, you don't have to hate on Microsoft anymore, that's very 2003, instead of focusing on what is the negative, let's instead consider the positive moves they've made, and the quality development environment they've come up with.