.Net tools vs. OS X Dev tools

I'm currently at work and installing the .Net framework and Development tools. It weighs in at four CDs with an additional fifth CD to install "necessary Windows components". This seems a bit excessive, especially when you consider that OS X's dev tools fit in around 220 MB!

While I don't fault .Net automatically for being large, I am becoming unoptimistic about the whole experience. I've done a ton of research into .Net and there are a lot of big features that Windows needs that are built into the .Net framework. However, there is a lot about .Net that is based on ideas that have been around for a while. (VMs, JIT compilation, garbage collection, the ASP.NET framework for building web pages dynamically...sound familiar). And there are (arguably) improvements MS has made in each these areas.

Also, the IDE and framework promise to simplify code and make it easier to do common programming tasks (in the same spirit of the OS X IDE and frameworks, though .Net promises much more than OS X tools do).

However, I remain skeptical about the true benefits of the .Net framework and tools. Microsoft has made claims like these before and come up short, and I will be interested to see .Net in use.

I am especially interested in how .Net will size up to the development tools and Frameworks built into OS X. I am absolutely in love with programming for OS X. It is simple and powerful, allows you to leverage multiple laguages (almost any derivative of C, Java, and now other scripting languages like Python), and has a great IDE built on top of it (with industry standards like CVS integration). There are some things that I would like to see changed and I'm sure the frameworks will be refined over the next few years, but I really think Apple is hitting the nail on the head with its development tool efforts.

So I will be scrutinizing .Net and its costs and benefits in relation to OS X's dev tools and technologies (specifically the IDE, Core Frameworks and Java) over the next few weeks and I'll try to post updates to fill you guys in on my opinion of all of this.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear the opinions of those developers who are experimenting with either (or both) of these technologies. And as always, comments from the peanut gallery are welcomed.

Well, time to restart my PC for the first of undoubtedly many times during the install process. Not a good way to start off. Grrr.

Later.

Matthew