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I'm hoping that the authors of SharpDevelop can be persuaded to port their software to Linux. I suspect the major sticking point at the moment is WinForms - I think that's part of WPF. If WPF is not part of the open sourcing, then there's no way a port could be made without a UI rewrite. Research says (paraphasing a bit) MS flatly denies that WPF will leave Windows as that is part of the presentation of the OS.

Other projects written by the ic#code guys are SharpZipLib, SharpUsbLib, and ILSpy. I know I've seen SharpZipLib used in a very expensive bit of Oracle reporting middleware and a few other projects.

just use http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/ or http://monodevelop.com/ .

SharpDevelop is arguably a better IDE than Visual Studio Express, though I certainly prefer the paid versions of Visual Studio I use at work. For homegrown development, though, SharpDevelop isn't bad.

http://monodevelop.com/ http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/ http://csharp-studio.sourceforge.net/ http://xacc.wordpress.com/ That would be four other c# IDE's three of which are multi-platform.

These guys for one. Or these folks. And these people. This is supposed to be very good. Also, these guys. Seriously, you could have just said you don't know anything about the capabilities of .NET in the first place. Or you could have just said nothing at all.

I would recommend starting with C#, also. One big advantage is the excellent and free IDE available from Microsoft (C# Express). There are also some excellent books available, such as Programming Microsoft Windows with C#, by Petzold. Also, C# is similar in syntax and structure to Java and C++, so you can more easily transition to these languages, if needed.

Haven't tried C# express but I did use SharpDevelop in a previous gig when doing a little windows dev - it struck me as very polished.

I ended up doing what I needed with Win32 API calls and building with wxDev-C++ but I don't like talking about it... (Because of Winsock2 rather than wxDev-C++.

Troll, eh? Is that because winsock2 is actually good or because I didn't close the bracket?

I would recommend starting with C#, also. One big advantage is the excellent and free IDE available from Microsoft (C# Express). There are also some excellent books available, such as Programming Microsoft Windows with C#, by Petzold. Also, C# is similar in syntax and structure to Java and C++, so you can more easily transition to these languages, if needed.

Haven't tried C# express but I did use SharpDevelop in a previous gig when doing a little windows dev - it struck me as very polished.

I ended up doing what I needed with Win32 API calls and building with wxDev-C++ but I don't like talking about it... (Because of Winsock2 rather than wxDev-C++.

Well put point, and there are projects out there for free OSS IDEs such as SharpDevelop to help bridge that gap with you don't want to pay for the native toolset/IDE

There is Sharp Develop[www.icsharpcode.net]. An open source IDE for .NET. It supports C#, VB, Boo, and F#.

Try SharpDevelop if you ever decide to trade in C++ for C# and the .NET framework.

http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharpDevelop

I'm not really a Microsoft platform coder any more, but I've used this one in the past and it's not bad. Basically a free (as in speech - LGPL) clone of VisualStudio.

no open source equivalant of Visual Studio

What about SharpDevelop?
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/

There is also SharpDevelop. It's free and open-source.

http://icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/

SharpDevelop works pretty well as an IDE for .NET development.

That's easy. Look at SharpDevelop:
http://www.icsharpcode.net/Opensource/SD/

Mostly just to be helpful (i.e., ignore this if it's not what you are looking to do):

Use the upgrade wizard for VS2005 to move to VB.NET from VB6. Then open it in Sharpdevelop (a free IDE that is better than VS Express, but lags a bit behind VS Enterprise) and convert it from VB.NET to C#.

Why? VB.NET is barely similar to VB6. And frankly, if you have to learn the .NET API, C# is a better choice. Also, it'll better support Mono for a cross platform approach.

In any case, once you have it running in VB.NET or C#, run it through the Mono Migration Analyzer.

MoMa will give you a clear report of the API calls that prevent it from running in Mono, and even more importantly, it will give Mono some feedback on the API's they need to step up and support more quickly.

I don't know what your app does, but anytime I see a chance to get more apps on Linux, I like to take the opportunity. I've been on Linux exclusively at home since 2000 and I'm a huge advocate for switching. More apps makes my "sell" easier. :-)

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/

Read existing documentation - some other posters already mentioned a few nice examples.
Get in contact with the project of your choice and ask them what they need. Walkthroughs, Tutorials, Manuals, technical documentation.
Read some more - style guides for technical writing. That is quite different to the writing of essays in school. (To get you started, try this one I wrote as a jump off point. Some technical journals also have guidelines for writing, read those too.

Disclaimer: I'm not claiming that my paper is the best guide out there, but it is decent for getting started into technical writing.

Maybe its not about being screwed. You obviously feel you or others have been "screwed" by people using you BSD licensed code in ways that the license clearly intended. Maybe sometimes people want to grant others the freedom to create closed source derivatives. Sometimes I want that people to have that freedom with my code. Sometimes I don't.

For me, it depends on the project. For example, I have written a frontend to Access and SQLite files. On a side not I released a new version today. See the link in my signature. It is GPLed. I wrote this originally to teach myself C#. I then began to use it to deal with access databases and someone pays me to deal with such things. It is a tool that makes my job easier. I give it away in the hopes that it will benefit others. This costs me nothing and if I can get other to try it, I can better improve it with there feedback. Perhaps I will get a patch from someone with improvements.

Now I have other things I would not mind under a closed source license. Most of these things are incomplete programs. For example, I have written some project and file templates for SharpDevelop, an Open Source IDE for .NET. I would very much like to know that people have used those templates in closed source code. I'd like to see my templates used to make classes that were Open Source as well, but its nice to be useful in general. I have other snippets that I will soon release on SourceForge under a BSD license. They demonstrate patterns and are personally researched and developed best practices. I hope to avoid others the trouble I have gone through.

The BSD license was specifically developed to allow code to be used in a closed source application. Anyone that contributes to a BSD project should know this.

The only problem I can see will be if MS adds features to the language that Linux version doesn't have, and lots of developers start writing MS-PHP code in Visual Studio targetting IIS. However, all that will do is make people ensure that there is a clear distinction of the version of PHP that their code is written for - something that happens already with PHP4 and PHP5.

While I do fear PHP extensions, I would actually like to see more PHP development on IIS. If there are more PHP windows developers, there are more people to help port PHP applications to run on IIS. Also, I've personally discovered that coding C# in an IDE (SharpDevelop), has encouraged me to learn about things like code documentation since the IDE holds my hand. When the time came to wrote PHP in VIM again, it was much easier to teach myself the slightly more free form PHP documenter, because I was able to format my DocBlocks in a manner similar to what an IDE did for me. In other words I took off the train wheels.

In July 2005, Ecma submitted [the C# and .NET] TRs to ISO/IEC JTC 1 via the latter's Fast-Track process. This process usually takes 6-9 months.

• SharpDevelop is an open-source IDE very similar to Visual Studio, it can do C# and VB.NET
• DotGNU is a GNU-sponsored project to implement the .NET platform.
• The Mono Project, started by Miguel de Icaza of GNOME fame, is another implementation of .NET

Also free VB.NET and C# compilers by downloading the Microsoft .NET Runtime SDK. (Only Visual Studio IDE costs $)
Combine Microsoft's free C# compiler and tools with the Open Source Sharp Develop IDE and you have a free C# development environment. Nice.

Aside from Visual Studio, there's also the open source project SharpDevelop. It's a IDE similar to VS and can compile for targets in .NET or MONO.

SharpDevelop homepage: http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/

I've been able to put together a few simple apps using the .NET Framework, which despite being a Microsoft product, is actually pretty decent.

You can use the Visual Studio Express products, but if you'd rather deal with a free (as in speech) alternative, SharpDevelop is as good as anything I've tried. You can use it to develop in either Visual Basic.NET or C#.Net, and it has a full and quite useful Windows.Forms layout system. For writing a basic Windows.Forms GUI, it's much less resource-intensive than Visual Studio, offers nearly the same features, and is GPL licensed.

For doing Windows development, the .NET framework and Windows.Forms is your best bet, and SharpDevelop gives you a nice open-source IDE with all the features you need.

I've installed the GPL licensed SharpDevelop at home and work. It's similar to a stripped down Visual Studio. It doesn't do ASPX with code-behind very well yet, but they're working on it. It should be just fine though for making a Windows GUI app as long as the DotNet libraries provide access to the ports you're using or you can get a hold of some that do.

All the Express editions only target .NET. At this point I still wouldn't consider the .NET framework ubiquitous quite yet, so this approach may seriously affect his deployment. Other than that, it's certainly a viable option. Another good one would be SharpDevelop, which might in fact be preferable to the Express editions purely for licensing reasons. I'm not sure if you're supposed to use Express builds for commercial purposes.

there an open source alternative: #Develop

and you can still choose between c# and vb.net

but c# would be the way to go offcourse ;-)

Check it out

Strange, from where I'm sitting they give the platform away for free, and always have done;

• v1.0 SDK
• v1.1 SDK
• v2.0 SDK

They even describe the SDKs as "verything you need to write, build, test, and deploy .NET". Sure, Visual Studio is a nice editor, but you don't need Visual Studio to write .net code. If you do want that crutch well you have, from Microsoft, the Express Editions, cost free for the next year, as well as 3rd party open source solutions like SharpDevelop.

So, according to your logic Windows wishes to gain more developers.

Actually there is a great IDE for both C# and VB.NET available that is free - SharpDevelop http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/. Until recently it was licensed under the GPL but the latest build of the upcoming release just switched to LGPL. Still, it free and it's source is freely available. Don't know if it runs on Linux under Mono though...

Come again?

Less FUD please, thanks. :)

It's severely crippled when compared to the standard edition dude.

For example, no crystal reports, you can only connect to a sql 2005 mdf file for a database. (No connecting via odbc or ole)

That said...

The express editions (and free until november 2006) are pretty good if you're wanting to do general programming (non-sql/db) stuff.

However, let me advertise something i've used in the past Sharpdevelop which can create programs written in VB.NET, C# and C++ (requires MS Visual Studio 2003 C++ Toolkit).
Version 1.0 only has a database viewer type thing, version 2.0 (which is still a work in progress.. classed as alpha I think) is apparently at some point going to have a proper database explorer akin to VS 2005 where you can drag and drop db fields etc into a program you're creating.

Successful Strategies for Commenting Code By Ryan Campbell
The Fine Art of Commenting by Bernhard Spuida
How To Write Unmaintainable Code

C# - The C# Coding Style Guide, Mike Krueger(SharpDevelop). This is probably the most widely used one (Novell). It largely agrees with Microsoft's internal coding standards, with a few exceptions.
    VB - .Net Coding Standards, part of the SDK. This is not comprehensive though, like the C# doc mentioned above.

Version Control -
    Server: Subversion + Apache
    Client: Tortoise SVN (Excellent) [We also use Perforce, CVS, VSS(Commercial apps)]
Continuous Integration - Cruise Control.Net
Intranet, Knowledge Management - DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke.com)
Project Management - dotProject (PHP) (www.dotproject.com), MS Project
Unit Testing - NUnit (www.nunit.org)

I haven't tried it myself yet but I know of at least one developer who writes modules for DotNetNuke using #develop. Sure, you still need the .net framework, but if you're using Windows 2000 or later you have it already and it's available for Windows NT4 (or was a little over a year ago when I was stuck using a laptop running NT4).

Bottom line In plain English this means you can use this library in commercial closed-source applications.

If you want a free IDE to go with those free compilers, you might enjoy SharpDevelop. It's a pretty good (open source/free) IDE, at least from the limited playing around I've done with it (I'm more of a Java / lamp guy, but I try to at least check in on the MSFT world once a year or so).

Express versions will be $49 a piece when they come out. The exception is SQL Server 2005 Express which is free.
You do not technically need Visual Studio to develop using .NET.
Check out SharpDevelop. It's features include: "Write C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, XML, HTML code" and: "C# to VB.NET converter, as well as VB.NET to C# converter" which Visual Studio does not have (unless they added it in 2005 and nobody told me).

The problem is that MS strongly ties the language with the IDE. That is, whenever C# (or Visual [anything] for that matter) gets new features, we have to buy a new version of Visual Studio to take advantage of it. No you don't. I've been doing C# and VB.NET development for several months now, and I've never shelled out any money to MS for tools. All the compilers and runtimes are freely downloadable from MS, and there are several good free IDEs (one of them from Microsoft). Check out SharpDevelop for a really nice open source .NET IDE written in C#. I'm not a big MS fan (I only grabbed the stuff because a job I was looking at wanted me to learn it), but these new C# features are extremely compelling.

If you want to avoid the VS for UI requirement, build your codebehind as a DLL/Class Library project, and have your UI built by hand, or in dreamweaver inheriting from the codebehind classes.

Then you can get better separation of the UI from the codebehind (instead of reintegration that VS.Net does for you) ... beyond this, you can more readily build a dll project without VS.Net (either via command line compiler, msbuild, nant etc.) just a few suggestions.. for a F/OSS IDE (doesn't do webforms) check out SharpDevelop MonoDevelop (*nix .Net environment) is based on it.

SharpDevelop is a pretty nice (free) IDE for C#.

I'm actually very fond of the documentation. It's rather complete, well laid out... and the APIs aren't as buggy as Java's

Regarding JScript .Net, you're pretty damned right it isn't well documented, I spent my first month trying to learn .Net, and wanted to use JavaScript (my fav. language) ... spent a larger part of the time converting VB.Net and C# stuff, much of which didn't seem to work right (anything using dll/system/unmanaged calls, never did figure that out).. finally I broke down and learned C#, was much more neat as far as code goes, the VB-Like tie-in for declared objects kinda irked me.

'VB
Public MyObject As Object

//JS
public myObject as Object; //iirc

//C#
public Object myObject;

I just like the C# syntax a bit better.. just a personal view though. I like JavaScript in and of itself, I think the way it handles say regular expressions should be added into C#, it imho is about the biggest point that JS has over C#, since the syntax outside of declarations is about the same.

As for .Net development, with the SDK installed, can always use SharpDevelop as a free, opensource ide for .Net ... MonoDevelop is based on an earlier fork of #dev.

Beyond all this, javascript can be used in conjunction with XUL as another RAD environment, iirc the TheOpenCD uses it for it's menu/installer front end..

Aside from the cost of the server, which you already mentioned where is the costly development environment for asp.net? SharpDevelop is free and GPLed. Microsoft offer WebMatrix for free (although it is just for asp.net applications) and you can also use notepad and compile by hand using the .net SDK.

Visual Studio is not your only option.

Those of you who want to try out a fully featured IDE for .Net can try out SharpDevelop. This is GPL'ed and the project (including source code) can be found at ICSharpCode.

I had written a couple of plug-ins for #D, and it took me less that two days to understand the architecture. Parts of the application are hacks, mainly because it does not have an industry heavy weigth behind it, unlike Eclipse. The project runs on contributions.

SharpDevelop architecture includes pluggable language parsers, components, add-ins etc. I will definitely recommend this application to any .Net programmer.

1. No, even the microsoft Runtime is free/redistributable.. and you probably won't even have to mention it in a few years... MS is pushing the runtime out heavily, as are other application vendors, you can easily refer them to install it via windows update, or the download page from MS. As an additional notation, MS's .Net SDK is also freely available, and can be downloaded by anyone, and you can use the SharpDevelop IDE for your windows development, and it's pretty much portable to mono.. if you avoid windows specific p/invoke statements, your app developed against the System.Windows.Forms interface will be portable to any mono platform (before the 1.2 timeline), and should run under Portable.Net as well.

True enough.. if you want a cheap/free/oss solution, then would suggest a php, or asp.net front end.. from a small web server with mysql, or a postgre backend. Though, you *could* use something like sharpdevelop to create a winforms app that can run on the desktop.. it's f/oss, and works pretty well, for windows, if you know vba, it wouldn't be too hard to pick up, get an intro book to vb.net, or C#, and should be off an running pretty quickly..

On a more advanced interface, there's wx.Net which would be more cross-platform portable.

Check this out... See if it meets your needs:

http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/

Works pretty well for me....

While I will say that C# is a good language to pick up, I would strongly recommend that a beginning software developer avoid DirectX in any flavor like it was an airborn Ebola virus.

Microsoft keeps changing its mind regarding what goes into DirectX, and older interface keep going obsolete with each new version of DirectX. More simply put, if you are not actively involved full-time in a professional setting and using DirectX as a part of your everyday development environment, don't use it.

For myself, I've spent far too much time trying to learn the basics of DirectX even since DirectX 1.0, and I had a pretty solid background of using COM/DCOM before even touching DirectX. Unfortunately, I was only an occasional dabbler with DirectX as most of my software development was in other areas. I watched as some of my software broke because of incompatable upgrades, and all sorts of new interfaces to learn with each new generation. At this point, I don't even bother because it is essentially like trying to learn it all over again. BTW, never, NEVER, NEVER upgrade the version of DirectX on your computer if you plan on doing a presentation sometime in the next couple of weeks, or have a product deadline (class assignment?) due in a short period of time. You may (and probabaly will) find at least some of your software not working any more, and more than likely see drivers "repaired" that should never have been touched.

For a beginning student like this high school student, DirectX just plain sucks. And anything he/she learns by programming with it will be lost anyway in the next few years. Choose a library like OpenGL or some other relatively stable (and preferably open source... for stability reasons as well) graphics library, and even then most of the simple graphics that you will need for a beginner's game system will not even require this library. All you need to do is learn how to turn on/turn off a graphic image's visibility property and be able to reposition the graphical object to different places on a display "form".

For getting into C# on the cheap, I would strongly suggest getting a copy of SharpDevelop, which works at least as well as Visual Studio for most of what a beginner would be doing anyway. They are past the 1.0 pain threshold of open source projects, and has plenty of objects available to do most of the fun stuff you would want to do for simple games as well. Don't get fancy, just learn the basics of making simple games and then branch out if you want to try something more challenging.

Well, as for C#, would take a look at mono or Portable.Net for some enlightenment... pnet is a bit further for desktop/gui stuff, and mono is further with asp.net for web-application hosting... ymmv.

Also, on the editor, I can't say enough good things about crimson .. I use it for about everything.. I've also been using SharpDevelop which is a FOSS ide, not quite as responsive as MS's 2003 VS, but pretty nice..

In fact doing a presentation on NON-Microsoft.Net for my .Net usergroup in a couple weeks... There have been several books published on mono, pnet, #develop and more.. with a few on the way. For desktop applications, it can be pretty nice (check out wx.Net a .net wrapper for the cross platform wxWidgets toolkit... works on win/lin/osx.

I have to say that the MS tools are about the best of their breed, eclips is pretty nice, and I like more of a plain text editor (with syntax highlighting, and programming options) like crimson. Textpad is nice, imho, crimson is better.

Most people don't develop software, and so considering the cost of Xcode makes about as much sense as itemizing each background image that comes with the respective operating systems in question, in order to determine the value to the consumer when they're going to download nudie pictures or anime from the Internet and use that instead.

But if they were developing software, I don't know, they might use
one
of the
numereous options available to them for free.

And as for video editing and music editing, I don't have any interest in either. And if my friend wanted me to do anything complicated involving either, I would probably not be qualified to do so anyway. Now if it were simple video editing, there are options.

I doubt very much you would want to pay the premium of a bundled Mathematica with your computer in the off-chance you think you might like to take up mathematics. Nor a bundled Minitab in case you decide you missed your calling as a statistician. But point out that Macs are a poor price-performance competitor and some Mac user will itemize bundled software they don't really use, vacuous claims about the superiority of the manufactured parts, or introduce vague notions regarding aesthetics.

Personally I can't see why anyone with any taste would use Aqua, or programs with ugly brushed metal themes. I don't really see why anyone with any taste would buy a bunch of white objects that will start off by not fitting in with their surroundings, and end up developing a dull tinge as they age. But it isn't really about aesthetics, it's about being superior to others by being in a higher-priced minority, so we can just forego any further discussion about style.

For programming in VB.net, try the open source ide #develop

Like C#Develop
Like Enterprise Manager

Because .NET is so piss easy to program.
I mean you get more enthusiasm of people joining projects and submitting code.
I mean how many of us can submit code to GIMP or code filters?

What about Open Office have you seen their perverse "VB" - how stupidly unintituive? How can company-apps be easily migrated? That is not Open Basic that is sick-Java mutated
But again because .NET is so slow and fails to be truly manageable on a larger scale (take Orkut for example) projects like this may die soon. Microsoft constantly changing the protocols and APIs doesn't help much either..

Still there are some absolutely IDIOTIC companies migrating their win32 apps to .NET - are you mad ???

Microsoft is like a mediocre daddy .. ah so many promises.