I played around with .NET 2.0 Beta 2 today, building a custom browser of sort. It was easy going at first but ran into a series of odd misbehaviors, incomprehensible features, and shortcomings. When I first ran into the Win32 API, more than a decade ago, it worked as I expected and the sea parted like butter at my command. Sweet. It was not so for this beta. VS 2005 was missing what I thought were crucial features too like being able to add an event handler by picking an event out of a list. Maybe I overlooked something or got too spoiled with Eclipse.

In short, it was promising but execution sucked and I am concerned that they just don't have their sh*t together. But then I realize that I have no business worrying about a closed IDE which will cost me an elbow.

Hey, Bill! I know it's crazy but I am already spoiled by a top quality FREE IDE. So why don't you just act crazy as well and forget about charging money for VS 2005? It's going to be shipping half-baked anyway. BTW, I've written a few IDEs before so I think I know what I am talking about. If you are having problem understanding what I am saying, just think of IDEs as browsers. It's the road into developer's heart. They'll choose .NET over Java if they are given a FREE developement environment that enables them to snap together what they have in their head faster than they can with notepad.