Sasha Sydoruk

• Reflector
• LLBLGen

Scott Hanselman - Sharpen the Saw for Developers

I, especially, like the part about creating a technical library at work and reserving some work time to read the books. I am a self-taught developer and without buying new books I wouldn’t get to where I am now. I think it is a really cheap way to become a better developer.

I am not so sure about attending conferences. They are usually interesting, but not very educational. Just my 2 cents.

• Ruby On Rails Migrations
• WCF
• Resharper 3.0
• Firebug
• Ruby On Rails Capistrano
• .NET DLR
• WPF
• Silverlight
• Warlock’s Pet at Level 20
• Murloc Suite

I have been a proud user of .NET framework for 6 years now and I still think it is a really awesome product and Microsoft did a wonderful job developing it.

WinForms is the best way to develop Windows application (with occasional jump into Interop for extra APIs); ASP.NET is enjoyable way to develop web applications and WCF is just pure honey. If all this makes me sound like Micro$oft fanboy, that’s because I am. .NET is really awesome and Visual Studio is the best way to do any kind of development. Especially with Resharper installed. I don’t know how JetBrains did it, but somehow they sold their souls to Satan and in return they can unleash the dark magic of Ctrl+Alt+Space.

But what puzzles me is that not too many people use ASP.NET to create cool products. Sure there are Community Server, MySpace, DotNetKicks and DasBlog; there are all very fine products, but compare them to LAMP, Rails and Java lineup: Digg, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Backpack and the Company, Delicious, all the Google Apps, Mint, Meebo, Twitter, Zillow and of course Infinite Cat Project. If you checkout the new startups on TechCrunch, it seems like every new startup is something Linux based and is not ASP.NET.

And I really want to know why. If you are a new startup, you have only one shot at it, so you really want to use the best tools available. And it seems like everybody picks anything but ASP.NET, unless you are doing corporate development.

Why are there so few startups that use ASP.NET? Is it the cost of tools? Hosting cost? Restrictive licensing? Or maybe ASP.NET became “the van” of web development. Safe, bulky and definitely not sexy.

I am sure that I have missed some really awesome ASP.NET projects, so please post the links in comments. Any thoughtful feedback is welcome. All flaming and FUD will be moderated.