Why i like .Net

Microsoft is deeply disliked by many, especially developers - and for good reason, many of their products are second rate.

One area where Microsoft products shine is in the business they started out in: development tools. There are many options in the marketplace for developers to choose from and while Microsoft leads in some areas such as desktop development it is far behind in things like databases engines and web development and servers.

Microsoft is making a huge effort in these areas. It has looked closely at what people do and the problems it's customers were facing. The offerings are nearly addictive in their productivity and ease of use.
With the most recent round of tools, especially .Net 2.0/VS2005 and SQL 2K5 it is possible to bang out a complex solution with breathtaking ease.
For example: in developing web applications, ASP.Net under VS2005 offers a rich, event driven programming model and broad array of UI controls as well as powerful tools to handle templateing, configuration, user management, navigation and so on. This stuff works beautifully and is intuitive and easy to access and learn as you go along. VS2005 offers a set of wizards designed to ease the task of accessing your data. These allow you to model your database in native objects with varying degrees of control and you can then link these object to controls in practical ways, allowing even fairly complex forms to be created with very little code. The wizards are smart and feel somehow transparent. Having used these features extensively, they feel stable, flexible and are well worth the effort of working within the constraints they enforce.

Microsoft's business practices are obviously harmful to consumers and business. As Microsoft gains control of a market, competitors disappear and progress grinds to a halt. I hope Microsoft's competitors at Sun and in the FOS arena stop sneering and take a close look at these tools and evolve their own offerings to make sure the competition keeps going.