I write C# code in Visual Studio every day at work, and I've got some thoughts. Microsoft writes nice tools, and they all work well together. It's a truly inte

I write C# code in Visual Studio every day at work, and I've got some thoughts. Microsoft writes nice tools, and they all work well together. It's a truly integrated environment up and down the stack. And for the simple cases, it's great. I hit F5, and my app runs, right out of the box. But I find the tools difficult to extend, when it comes to it. They are mostly black boxes. This means I'm dependent on MS to add features before I can use them easily. It's possible to write plugins for VS, etc., but I don't get the sense that most people do that. I know I don't. It seems difficult and time-consuming; I'd rather just live with less than ideal behavior. But I've been trying to branch out into other stuff in the past year or so and dabble in different things (app engine, some rails, some C code). What I've noticed is that low level tools like make are cool for a few reasons. First, regardless of its syntax, make is pretty damn simple for the simple cases. Even as a novice, its easy for me to tweak a makefile to suit my needs. I think this simplicity is valuable. By the same token, the generated code for rails is all pretty easy to follow and tinker with. That's not always the case when you pull back the curtain from Visual Studio. Second, make (and others) are orthogonal to the other tools I'm working with. It doesn't matter what editor or framework or languages I'm using. It's pretty easy to whip up a makefile to compile or deploy a dev build or whatever. This is true because steps in a makefile are expressed in terms of terminal commands. Simple and powerful. Third, make is ubiquitous. I think it's pretty cool that I can use the same makefile to deploy my app engine site from Ubuntu or OSX. I guess what I'm trying to say is that MS's powerful tool set feels oddly constraining to me. I feel much more in control with a set of simple and independent tools, even though I'm much less experienced with them. Just my two cents.