ASP.NET already runs on .NET with Mono, but not always the latest versions of things. Having it all open source could bridge that compatibility gap and let us fully enjoy the ecosystem, instead of having to be careful with taking dependencies all over.

ASP.NET support on Mono is very shaky, with random things missing. I tried to develop a Mono ASP.NET MVC app on it recently and I had to switch to Windows due to the number of issues.

For webapps, I am using Nancy and .Net 4.5 and I am very happy with it. Developing debugging on windows and deploying it on ubuntu apache with mod mono works great for me.

ASP.NET is a big framework and indeed it's never been as smooth as it could be, especially with the very latest versions. It's not to say that web dev is not possible with Mono. I've been using Owin+Nancy+Signalr successfully on Linux.

Could/Does Visual Studio run in Linux?

No, in it's current form it probably won't be ported to a non-windows platform. This isn't to say there never will be an IDE called Visual Studio that looks like a current Visual Studio that runs on more platforms in the future.

I'm not sure they will migrate Visual Studio. First they'd need to move WPF, which is implemented in DirectX. Second, Visual Studio and MSDN are still profitable. Third, there's the Omnisharp project that;s working on providing support for the more common IDEs on linux. In fact, there's nothing stopping people from making Eclipse and IntelliJ plugins.

Silverlight's implementation of WPF runs on OS X already so presumably a lot of the ground work, at least for an OS X port, exists. I'd buy a copy of VS for Mac in a heartbeat.

Same. I haven't run windows in 7 years, but Visual Studio is still one of the best IDEs I've ever used. I'd gladly pay for it if it was released on OS X/Linux, although that's somewhat contingent on the plugins that I want running on it too.

Having used Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, Visual Studio in some fashion over the past year, I personally prefer IntelliJ for its well thought-out interface, low footprint, numerous productivity-boosting shortcuts ( I love Help>Productivity guide) and refactoring options, etc. I literally pine for IntelliJ's features when I use Visual Studio. In fact IntelliJ offers the very popular but pricey Resharper extension for Visual Studio to bring Visual Studio on par with IntelliJ's IDE.

Doesn't Windows cost like $200 on top of a $1000+ copy of visual studio? Why draw the line at not paying for the OS?

I'm talking about an alternate universe where it's available on OS X, and it's about $45 per month if you get the subscription version.

The other thing is that I want to use OS X for everything else -- I much prefer using it for development above Windows, so while you may be correct in terms of sheer dollar value comparison, in terms of opportunity and switching costs it's quite higher than that for me personally.

I really hope that JetBrains are working on a C# support for IntelliJ.

I'd buy the next version in a heartbeat if they offered it.

Haha, they just sent me an email about why I haven't upgraded to the latest ultimate version. I think cross-platform .NET(F#/C#) support would be the clincher.

A few weeks back I asked Scott Gu if there were any plans for Visual Studio on OSX/Linux and the answer was no. He mentioned they're focusing on Visual Studio Online, though I don't know if that means some sort of online IDE.

I wonder how long it will take a courageous developer to port WPF to OpenGL.

This has been asked about for nearly as long as Mono and WPF have been in coexistence. I would say there's very little chance this will happen. However, a recent update in the WPF world is MS has actually been ramping their WPF team back up after it looked like it would suffer the same fate as Silverlight. So who knows?

Check out https://github.com/grokys/Perspex

>> First they'd need to move WPF, which is implemented in DirectX.

What version? There is DX9 support on Linux and IIRC a partial DX10/11 implementation bit-rotting somewhere.

DX9 support is still experimental and requires an unstable Wine fork to make it run.

I have to say I managed to have it working and I got a 50% increase in FPS in Steam/Source games running under Wine.

There's the "old" DirectX -> OpenGL translation layer in Wine but it is not really efficient or performant, although it may be enough for GUI applications.

>> There is DX9 support on Linux and IIRC a partial DX10/11 implementation bit-rotting somewhere.

Sadly Gallium3D isn't "Linux" yet. It's only really usable on AMD open source drivers that is very small portion of market and I would say it's 15% at best, but in reality likely 5-10%.

No, which is _the_ reason I am on windows.

There are several groups working to fill the gap left by VS not running on non-windows platforms (including my own company). There will be options!

No. But check out http://www.omnisharp.net/

Not yet. MonoDevelop is the closest you'll get at the moment.

no need for that. Just use your favorite editor with omnisharp[1]

[1] http://www.omnisharp.net/

I still haven't gotten it working in vim consistently enough to switch to the mac for development. When it does work, the lag makes it too slow, doesn't really allow for method discovery like intellisense, Ctags and omnicomplete still get better mileage for me.

if you can attach and debug a process through sublime text, then maybe.

as it stands there is no real replacement for visual studio (save maybe xamarin studio / mono develop)

Funny thing is that internal to Microsoft, most devs don't use Visual Studio as an IDE. Maybe as an editor or a debugger, but there are a lot of build systems out within Microsoft and most of them don't plug into Visual Studio.

IMO, open sourcing Visual Studio itself is not all that interesting vs. open sourcing the .NET platform.

I work at Microsoft and everything is done through Visual Studio (C#, C++, Javascript, X++, etc.). Where is VS not used inside Microsoft?

I worked at Microsoft Excel 15 years ago and Visual Studio was only used as a debugger. Visual SlickEdit was the editor and compiling/building was command-line based. Each group is different.

Ah, that may be true. However, there was a push within my division to standardize all of our tools with VS (there used to be a separate editor for X++ but now it's all VS), and I've heard other things about other divisions.

umm, source?

Source is I worked there for eight years. Left two years ago. There was a push around the time I left to standardize more on TFS, but historically, VS was regarded internally as a bit non-hardcore.

There is more chance to see VS in OSX tan in Linux.