I really thought this topic was going to bring the haters...and yet the majority of the commentary has been uniformly positive. What is MSFT doing wrong, then, that more people aren't building web apps on their stack?
For the record, Visual Studio is amazing. My buddies use VI. Whatever works, but I love VS.
Deployment is less convenient (fewer Windows webhosts, especially on the low end).
If you don't run Windows, Visual Studio becomes less attractive, cutting out the free unix and Mac crowd.
Also, their marketing is just... not as nice. Compare rubyonrails.org to asp.net. One says 'Web development that doesn't hurt', and has big clickable pictures. The other is ugly and seems to be selling stuff.
When you're just starting out, the little things like that matter.
What an interesting point...yes, the sites have very different looks and feels, for sure. I wonder how many newbies get scared off from ASP.net from the ASP.net site.
For the record, Visual Studio is amazing. My buddies use VI. Whatever works, but I love VS.