I disagree. Your points are not substantiated and are attacking fellow programmers. I know many programmers (myself included) who have programmed and are reaso

I disagree. Your points are not substantiated and are attacking fellow programmers. I know many programmers (myself included) who have programmed and are reasonably competent in different languages using different text editors and IDE's on different operating systems and have made a conscious decision to use Visual Studio because, well, it is the tool that allows them to be the most productive. Companies choose Visual Studio because it allows their teams to be most productive. I find myself using VS more and more for personal projects, as I haven't found anything that can beat the combination of F# and C# when used from VS. The .NET framework and languages have seen the introduction of some really exciting stuff such as LINQ, Reactive Extensions etc. etc. which are all supported by VS and offer more than enough for developers to keep interested in the platform.