[thelist] skeptical about the "benefits" of .NET (Visual Studio, Visual Basic, and ASP)

[Burhan Khalid]

Sarah Sweeney wrote:
[ snipped ]
> 
> Can you recommend a good tutorial for VB.NET, ASP.NET and/or Visual 
> Studio .NET, preferably not written from an "I love Microsoft" perspective?

I found that the sample sites that are available from MS were good 
examples.  The Professional ASP.NET (or something like that) book from 
Wrox is also good.

> What are the pros and cons of ASP.NET over classic ASP (in plain English)?

Well, for one thing ASP.NET is a whole set of technologies, for which 
you can program in any of the .NET-enabled languages (there are more 
than what MS ships).

> What are the pros and cons of developing in Visual Studio, rather than 
> using my usual (non-WYSIWYG) editor?

The class browser and intellisense are great.  Plus, if you do any 
enterprise-level development, it has great integration and testing options.

If you just need a class browser and intellisense, I would suggest you 
download the free WebMatrix, which comes with its own .NET-enabled web 
server so you can test your work.

> My (so far brief) intro to Visual Studio leads me to believe that it 
> probably outputs some really ugly HTML, as many WYSIWYG editors do - is 
> it as bad as I think, and are there ways to avoid/minimize the ugliness?

As a general rule, I don't use WYSIWYG editors to generate code, 
especially those from MS; so I can't comment specifically on this part. 
  However, if you use the text mode, things work out quite well.

Its been a long time since I developed in VS.NET; so some of this stuff 
might be upgraded in the new versions of the software.