Since the introduction of Visual Studio, Microsoft has held a near monopoly on integrated development environments(IDEs) for it's own developer tools. With the release of Visual Studio.NET and the .NET Framework, Microsoft's grip on the developer tools market has slipped with a number of free or low-cost development tools available for .NET coming on the market in the past few years.
This article delves into some of the options you may consider when looking for an IDE for .NET development. As a new developer to the .NET platform or if you are concerned about the rising cost of the development tools, you may find some of the tools we cover may be all you need to develop robust .NET applications, without going to the expense of buying Visual Studio.NET.
There is one tool that we left out completely â€" and that is Notepad. There are some developers out there who would tell you that you can develop a .NET application from scratch using nothing more than Notepad and your own wits. We preferred to stick to the tools that are -value add" and provide some additional features and functionality you won't find in Notepad.
Getting started
Regardless of which tool you choose in the end, the first thing you should do is download and install the .NET Framework and the .NET Framework SDK from either the Microsoft download center or from MSDN. The SDK contains all of the tools and compilers you will need to create .NET applications.
Likewise, if you are planning on distributing or deploying your .NET applications, you may want to download the .NET Framework redistributable, which you can include with any setup program or instructions.
| Ease of use | To start, we evaluated how easy each tool was to learn and use as compared to Visual Studio.NET, including an evaluation of the design environment itself, placement of commonly used items, etc. and the general overall impression of the tool. |
| Features and functionality | Covering features included within the design environment for reducing development time and manual coding of common tasks, features that are included in Visual Studio.NET and/or not present in the alternate tool. |
| Code development | Most .NET developers will spend a good portion of their time writing code and with this set of criteria, we are judging how well the tool is suited to coding, including debugging features, step-throughs. |
| Platform and language support | One of the tangible benefits of looking at Visual Studio.NET alternatives is that most of the tools we reviewed support multiple platforms and languages and in this criteria, we look at how well this support is developed. |
| Documentation and support | Another key area is the documentation and support that is available for each tool. We look at whether the documentation is organised and well written and also look at the support and user communities around each. |
| Cost | And finally, cost was the last criteria that we evaluated, with tools ranging from free to a few thousand dollars per developer, there was definitely some disparity among the tools we selected. |
| Table 1: Evaluation criteria | |
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1
Rob Poyntz - 22/06/05
How could you perform this comparison of tools without considering the Borland Developer Studio / Delphi 2005? With support for both Delphi.Net and C#, surely the author should have considered this IDE in the article?
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2
Brendon Chase - 23/06/05
We chose these tools because they were a cheap alternative and lesser known than other enterprise options such as Delphi 05. We have covered Borland tools for .NET (well C# Builder just before Delphi 05) in our RAD tools comparison which can be found here:
http://www.builderau.com.au/program/0,39024614,39131183-5,00.htm
However, stay tuned for a head-to-head with VS in the near future!
Thanks for feedback,
Brendon Chase
Editor, Builder
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3
David Boccabella - 23/06/05
I agree SharpDevelop is an excellent product for learing the more advance features on .NET
One can purchase the standard and professional versions of VB.NET however it does not allow you to create Services etc..
SharpDevelop fills that gap and in a connstant developmetn cycle to improve it.
Very good Product indeed.
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4
Witness - 23/06/05
Visual SlickEdit costs $284 for a single copy. How can it be "Excellent" for cost??? Is the writer using a pirated copy of it? :-)
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5
Lewis Daniells - 23/06/05
Visual SlickEdit isn't free?
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6
James Brockman - 24/06/05
There was one other product that was worth mentioning:
http://www.c-point.com/c_sharp_editor.php
James Brockman
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7
Andrew Arnott - 25/06/05
Dreamweaver is NOT a replacement for Visual Studio coding.
It may have the ability to create an .aspx page, and even drop in a few standard ASP.NET controls, but in no way can it replace VS for writing Windows Forms applications, or any decently sized, ASP.NET-utilizing web app. Heck, it doesn't even have support for a compiler.
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8
Jon Paal - 30/06/05
Sharp Develop is not an excellent product. It is horribly buggy and hangs on every attempt to exit. the help and documentation is out of sync with the current version, the copy to clipboard often throws an ugly error message. I could go on.
Yes it's definitely free and it shows.
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9
Piet Pieters - 11/07/05
What about Borland Delphi ? The Delphi 2005 IDE can be used to develop .NET applications in Delphi and in C#.
http://www.borland.com/us/products/delphi/index.html
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