03-26-2011, 02:24 PM
I'm a Microsoftie. (Was one of the original betaguys on .NET, got involved with MSFT New England, and never looked back.) I use Visual Studio Professional, running VB (I prefer VB to C# because being more verbose, it's easier to maintain), and augmented with a lot of JQuery. The datastore is, however mySQL, not MSSQL.
Two programs that I use almost as much as Visual Studio and mySQL are Paint.NET a freebie graphics program that rivals the guys that charge many hundreds, and Poser, a 3D modeling program. There's a compatible to Poser (which isn't free) called DAZ3d which is free, even for commercial use
One of the things folks might consider if they get serious about programming is that MSFT has a startup program that provides access to an awful lot of high-powered software, almost for free. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark and check out "Getting Started." They'll give you the software priced in the tens of thousands and, after three years, they want you to pay 'em $100. If you aren't ready to handle the major stuff, Microsoft's express versions of all their major development tools are probably worth a look. Of course, you have to be running Windows and not think that Redmond is a bigger threat to the U.S. than Iran.
Two programs that I use almost as much as Visual Studio and mySQL are Paint.NET a freebie graphics program that rivals the guys that charge many hundreds, and Poser, a 3D modeling program. There's a compatible to Poser (which isn't free) called DAZ3d which is free, even for commercial use
One of the things folks might consider if they get serious about programming is that MSFT has a startup program that provides access to an awful lot of high-powered software, almost for free. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark and check out "Getting Started." They'll give you the software priced in the tens of thousands and, after three years, they want you to pay 'em $100. If you aren't ready to handle the major stuff, Microsoft's express versions of all their major development tools are probably worth a look. Of course, you have to be running Windows and not think that Redmond is a bigger threat to the U.S. than Iran.