What could better than Visual Studio?

How about FREE COPIES of the following tools:
*Visual Basic 2005 Express
*Visual C# 2005 express edition
*Visual Web Developer 2005 Expres edition
*SQL Server 2005 Express edition

All available @ http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

At that price, who needs to settle for inferior "free" software? Get the real deal today!

>Remind me how MSVC++ still can't comply with the C++ standard after almost ten years?

Standards that are not based on production useage are worth ignoring. What matters is real world application; not the approval of the high council of linux fags

>Oooh, or maybe I'll code in C#, the bastard .NET child of Java and C++.

Java is the bastard child of C and C++; C++ is the bastard child of C. Ten years ago luddites were bitching about C++; now you're bitching about Mono. *Yawn*

>>20
>SQL Server is actually decent. Regrettably, porting between DBMS is a PITA...
Isn't this true, regardless of the database you use?