C#Builder Trials Available
Not sure when I'll get to checking it out, but I most certainly will at some point. Borland builds strong IDEs. Which isn't to say it's a surefire bet to be better than VS.NET. But it's nice to see some competitions. Note to JetMinds: we're waiting...
Download link (requires registration)
Update: I gave it an abbreviated spin. Thoroughly underwhelming and therefore fairly disappointing. Slow/unresponsive IDE, its version of intellisense, even at the fastest delay setting, feels stilted. Not really much to favor it over VS.NET upon first blush. Two nice features:
- Setting up a web project allows you to specify an application freely, it's not hard-linked to project name.
- The HTML/ASP.NET editor works pretty well in terms of formatting. It appears they've used a custom build of tidy that miraculously doesn't eat page directives and user defined controls (it's fairly hard to use tidy to clean up after VS.NET even with force output and the basic custom tags configured). Being able to write aspx/ascx files as neat and tidy as your code behind is a big plus but probably not enough to warrant buying a copy.
I'll give it another spin sometime when I'm working on something very limited, but in terms of first impressions it was as sluggish as using SharpDevelop (which at least has managed code and WinForms to point to as a cause) and, in a nutshell, pretty underwhelming. We'll see, but it looks like Whidbey is (once again) the real only future player in the space.