IDE / Code Generators for ASP, .NET…

I was talking to my brother in law today, he recently took a position with a development firm in Oklahoma that is involved in a large Governemnt project.  His background is in Java programming and had gotten pretty proficient with it but in his new job he is having to work with ASP.NET and SQL Server.  Having to shift gears like that would make a lot of programmers heads spin but he’s going to get up to speed very quickly with ASP.NET I think. 

Developers today have many IDE Choices for developing software, Visual Studio, The Eclipse Project, just to name a few.  In some cases the actual software required to write software can be had for free, as is in the case of Eclipse.  I have used several of these development environments in the past and for the most part they all do exactly what they are supposed to do.  Of course most developers will have their own particular tool that they have used for years that they prefer over everything else. 

While we were talking I asked him what IDE they used at his new firm for developing their applications, he was telling me that they use Microsoft Visual Studio.  I told him a little bit about PHPR (phprunner) and how I have really embraced this software.  Software like PHPR is what I consider to be “second generation development environments”.  The reason I say that is because they allow us (developers) to rollout applications and updates to projects in a lot less time.  I was telling him that Xline, the company that produces PHPR also have ASP and ASP.NET IDE solutions that could dramatically cut down his development time as opposed to using Visual Studio.  I also shared with him how the company supported the software and how helpful the entire community was when it came to supporting each other.  I think that we are going to sit down this weekend and download a trial of ASP.NET Runner and give it a test drive

I think that sometimes I get so wrapped up in the PHPR IDE that I sometimes forget to mention to folks that they (Xline) also have the same tool available for ASP and ASP.NET.  If you are looking to get into ASP or ASP.NET programming be sure to click on the links above.