EQDiva

I was pretty excited about this site and the prospects of .NET but when i delved into it and searched online it looks to me like i might have to get SQL server and Win2000 IIs server. I cannot afford all that just to learn about .NET. I have Visual Studio 6.0 and WinXP Pro. I know how to build HTML web pages and a bit about java. How do get some information about what i need to have installed on my machine to make great pages like this? can you please link some web pages i can go to get this info and some books you recomend?

Well no one answered me, and after a few more days of tediously searching the internet i found my answers.

Not sure what you found out but check out WinXP Professional, it has IIS services. For a backend if you dont mind a space limitation and a connection throttle limitation check out MSDE 2000. Its free from licensing and other than the limitations noted above is MS-SQL in every way. Smendle

You have everything you need to start experimenting with .NET. Like Smendle said, if you want the SQL Server type database, you can use the free MSDE. For sample code, check out www.asp.net, from there you can download the code to these forums and a free basic SQL Server engine, as well as download a free .NET editor (not that you need one, all you need is Notepad). That site should start you off with a list of great .NET websites and books. :)

or you could go to the OPEN standard which is not only quite cheaper (ITS ALL FREE) but cross platform. PHP/mySQL are both opensource and very free. Check it out :-)

I have lots of coworker friends who used to do their home pages in PhP/mySQL, I have nothing against it. :) But is there a market demand for php programmers? I just don't see it too much. C# programmers, on the other hand, is on the rise and paying good! Now for .NET, it can be free: Download the free .NET framework Download a free web server like Cassini Web server Use Notepad or another free IDE [url]http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/default.aspx?tabIndex=4&tabId=46[/url] (Although VS.NET is fantabulos and worth it!) Use a free database like the one we talked about above And there you have it, FREE .NET capability! .NET is open language, you can use C#, C++, VB.NET, COBOL, (for .NET) etc... That is truly amazing when you can have Java and VB developers working on the same project, and easily cross-debugging each other's code and calling their functions, etc... As for open source, there are efforts on open source .NET. .NET was designed with platform independence in mind, just when it first came out, only worked with Windows. Don't worry, this is changing. http://www.go-mono.com/

Here's an article where a PHP guy enthusiastically tells everyone to try out .NET! [url]http://www.sitepoint.com/article/871[/url] His 6 points are: [b][u]6 Great Reasons to Use .NET[/u][/b] 1. Speed 2. More Language Support 3. Your Choice of Development Environments 4. It's Part of .NET 5. It's [b]Cheaper[/b] to Develop for 6. It's Cross-Platform