[Romoku]

I will admit Microsoft could do better with their pricing. Sql Server Express and Visual Studio Express are free, but I have licenses to all of my development tools ($50 Sql Server developer edition + $500 Visual Studio + $150 Resharper).

Their partner program action packs are relatively cheaper than buying the individual products ($429 Design and Dev action pack includes pretty much everything) or an MSDN subscription.

Their BizSpark program is aimed at keeping costs low during development and Azure has simplified deployment (1 shared instance + Sql Database + 50GB bandwidth for $25/mo).

I've found Node to be a good supplement for some middleware (but it still has bland RDBMS support especially with SQL Server).