Sorry buddy too, Java also exists longer than .NET. Unix exists longer than windows, IE was not the first browser. And so on. Many things are not invented by MS. But of course there is always something that is older than something other. Maybe in earlier days VS was a new and good kind of IDE (I don't know). But now they are running behind. And notice the bugs in VS, the crashes and the bad performance (maybe not all get them but I do). VS2005 needs a SP from the beginning. You have less of those problems with Eclipse. Another interesting thing: Look at the amount of add-ins you can get for Ecplipse (> 1000): http://eclipse-plugins.2y.net/eclipse/plugins.jsp?category=All Don't underestimate Eclipse.

Okay, ReSharper is fine. Unfortunately it works only with c#, not with vb what I'm using. So I have never used it. The free Refactor add-in from devexpress is the tool I use. About this tool I can only say that has some nice visual effects but it doesn't do much. And some operations seems to be very slow - I'm faster if I do it myself. I miss some things like extract-to (and create) base class or other things. What also would be nice is to move a string to the resources by shortcut, so I don't have to switch all the time. However, maybe it's not so easy to compare two IDEs that are built for different kind of frameworks. I guess both, the IDEs and the frameworks, will still be present for next couple of years. Non of them will disappear. And I guess you can work with both very well. And also, we should be glad if we have different tools and techniques, so we get more ideas and innovations. I could imagine: There would be no .NET if there has never been Java. And Java would have never exist if there was no disadvantages with the C/C++-thing. And so on. I assume that if there would only be VS on our world and no competitor than we would be still have VS 1 (maybe with service pack 57). -- modified at 7:55 Thursday 6th April, 2006

I would also think that Eclipse is the better IDE. I have worked with it for a year. Now I have to work with VS2005 which is also nice, especially the GUI editor works fine. But I miss some refactoring things and other utilities (e.g. in Eclispe you can select one variable and all other occurences are highlighted as well. One little advantage). But also Eclispe is so flexible. You can even use Eclipse as a framework for your own application. I don't see any usability limitations. I have already seen a map application with Eclipse. And last but not least it is Open Source. With all its advantages. I guess you can even say VS is much inspired by Eclipse. MS products are often a step behind. VS is not a revolution nor a big innovation. It has some nice parts. But I would prefer Eclipse if I could choose. However, you cannot expect much appreciation on the codeproject site. That is quite logical.