[nreece]

ASP.NET and the .NET Framework are free no less, and more reliable than Windows itself. And the Mono project (.NET stack for Unix) is open source.

While ASP.NET in its out-of-the-box form may be a bit daunting at times, since it follows nearly the same development model (viz event wireups, binded controls etc) as with developing software apps. But ASP.NET MVC is an upcoming alternate model that is quite flexible and more appealing for web development.

Having worked with MS tools for over a decade I can easily say that the .NET IDE's have only gotten better, more usable and powerful, whether its Visual Studio Express (free) or SharpDevelop (open source).

[babul]

The basic tools are free but why get locked into MS with all it all its licensing, proprietary software/platform/toolset, upgrade, and cost issues.

MS does make some very good products (I use and like VS2008) but the core reason most hackers don’t use them is because they don’t want these aforementioned issues. This becomes more evident the more you scale.

It is no coincidence the top performing web-apps produced so far have not been based on MS software.