This is a good start, and very appreciated. I have found that asp.net is very rough on the brain when you are used to RoR and Django. Any thoughts on that?
I agree, ASP.Net bends over backwards to give a winforms-like experience (which invariably it doesn't). Some features (databinding?) seem to have been incorporated just to enable drag'n drop visual development, which is only really useful when recording screencasts and giving demos.