Most Microsoft technology is completely free for non professionals. PC came with a Windows CD or the OS was per-installed already. You could install IIS (ASP server, l.limited to 5 users) from the Windows CD. I used the classic notepad.exe to code. It was kinda standard to buy the Office package, which came with a file based database. There where plenty of free tutorials on the web, and IIS also had some examples. And there where services that would host your web app for free. If you wanted to do "real" programming you had to buy books and a compiler which was super expensive.

Moving to Linux was a new world opening, that I had only seen glimpses of before. Using apt-get to install an app was mind blowing. Getting used to the command line took a while, but now I do everything from the terminal, except some GUI apps and the browser. Still have to look up most commands and read man pages though.

I think my experience might have been crippled a bit by having had a mac as my main PC since university, meaning less easy access to a non-locked down Windows installation.

Much the same way as Windows users probably are not big objective C developers...

It just felt like for a server language like .NET that your personal laptop shouldn't really matter much.

In that space, you'd mostly have needed to use Mono and MonoDevelop, depending on the time-frame.. after MS bought Xamarin, Visual Studio for Mac is actually a descendant of MonoDevelop

Windows license is still $199 for us Mac users ;)

And even if you're buys a laptop, then you must pay extra for the "pro" version of Windows to actually install IIS. (Last time I tried installing IIS on Win7Home - it just told me that my OS wasn't supported)

I have IIS on my Windows 10 Home Surface 6. I have encountered no problems at all; I did not buy it with this in mind, but now it's doing all my dev work. Biggest problem is that Teams uses 600 MB to sit idle so I never have any memory to do anything interesting.

I've never had to pay for my own MSDN, IDE or server while I was in the Microsoft development ecosystem. In many cases, my employer would pay for those things, and it was usually generously flexible - i.e. I could build Windows machines and install Office at home off those licenses. The Community edition of Visual Studio has been sufficient for quite some time, though I'm sure there are cases where it is not.

Anyone running a copy of Windows could run a free copy of SQL Server (Express) and SQL Server Studio, IIS Express and the .NET Framework using VS Community to build MVC apps. You would use the Web Platform Installer for just about any of those things.

Between https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/aspnet (previously https://asp.net) and https://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx it's generally very easy to dip your feet in the waters.

(All that being said, I'm now in the NodeJS ecosystem. It's... interesting!)

You don't have to pay for anything to learn the Microsoft stack.

- Visual Studio Community Edition is full featured and free

- SQL Server Express is free

- You really don't need IIS but it is free. With C# you can run on top of Kestral.

This is true now but it wasn't when I started doing dot net development ~10 years ago. If it wasn't for my employer covering the costs I wouldn't have been able to do it.

There were free editions but they were crippled versions of the paid ones with no extensions, etc. The free versions were generally unloved and had annoying quirks.

At the time you needed to add a Resharper license in there too to be decently productive which was yet another overhead.

I disagree that Resharper was required to be "decently productive". Resharper turned your Honda of a Visual Studio into a Lexus, and Java developers (who were already used to Lexuses of their own) appreciated it... but you can still drive around with a Honda. Similarly, the limits on extensions in Express editions wouldn't hinder learning .NET development, or even working on most projects.

However, VS Express itself took a while to appear. Back when .NET first appeared, the only thing that was free was the .NET Framework itself (including command line compilers), and online MSDN documentation. Eventually, we got SharpDevelop.

But, well, there's free, and then there's free. In my home country, you could buy a bundle of CDs with complete VS 2002 + MSDN distribution on the black market for around $20. Which was still expensive for students, mind you - so the same bundle was then shared around the class (including the teachers, who only had an older bundle of VS6).

I learned from the sdk command line and a book... mostly because after 9-11 within a couple months my day job and side job were gone and had lots of time on my hands for about 8 months... through the later betas and the 2002 release I hadn't touched an IDE for it... after I got a job though, kept up with it... but SharpDevelop worked for me for the most part in the earlier years.

Fair point. I’ve been developing commercially with Visual Studio since 2000. I never had to try to learn it on my own.

It wasn’t until 2014 when MS started releasing the non crippled version.

But consider yourself lucky. Do you know how hard it was for middle schooler to get a good 65C02 assembler in the 80s like I had to?

I never used Resharper and stay away from JetBrains products as much as possible, with exception of Android Studio.

It looks like they design for developers with gaming rigs and ten finger chords, I even start enjoying using Eclipse again after spending a couple of months on a Java assignment with InteliJ.

Then my .NET team wonders why I never complain about VS speed and crashes, easy, I am the only one not using Resharper.

Sure, now, but when I was starting out a decade ago, everything seemed to be quite big money.

Even reading the docs seemed to need a login and paid subscription.

I used "C# The Complete Reference" with the command line compilers to learn it in the later beta and through the 2002 release. No IDE, just a windows desktop.

I think VS Community started in 2015... there was also a SharpDevelop and MonoDevelop option in between, from pretty early on. I used SharpDevelop on my own projects for a number of years. Around 2011 I started using Node more and have been back and forth on projects since.

Visual Studio Express was available before Community getting available.

Had forgotten about express tbh... I thought there was something, but have either had access to a company version, or used SharpDevelop (at least in earlier years).