floyde said:
Have you ever developed with .NET? It's really not as bad as you think. In fact, I think it's the only decent software that Microsoft has ever produced (aside from Office Mac). The framework is far from lacking IMHO, you never find yourself re-inventing the wheel like you would with other languages (*cough* Java *Cough*
).
Pretty much all I do is .NET development, and have been with it since its inception. Its a wrapper with one or two additional pieces of functionality thrown in.
floyde said:
I feel it's the exact opposite. I've never had any problems with .NET's exisiting controls, and I've never had the need to use software that's not included in the framework itself.
Also, it has very good MySql integration as well as one of the best IDEs out there. Of course, for now, there's the major drawback of its Windows-only support, but if they bring it to the Mac, I'll take it as good news.
Yes, you can do a lot with the framework controls if you want to write a crapload of code. Like the grid control. Microsoft's is so worthless, THEY don't even use it... they use
Xceed's. You want to take an XML framework and turn it into a database? Microsoft will tell you to buy XMLSpy. (or roll your own which is what we ended up doing.) You want to populate a SQL Mobile database from the desktop? Hope you have IIS installed! (unless you hack your way around it again, like we ended up doing against Microsoft's suggestion.)
The IDE is excellent, I agree, but still sub-par. Our Source Safe craps itself daily. Visual Studio 2005 STILL has a "Clean Solution" menu item that does absolutely nothing unless you are using C++. Occasionally my copy will crash on a blank line or a comment because the IDE forgets to update the debug database. Stuff like this shouldn't occur with a product that costs as much as we're paying for it.
