twaelti,

I have come from a windows background, I have a lot of experience with microsofts' IDEs and toolchains and I agree, for a "complete package" in microsoft land its all there and works. Its also expensive and slow and has just as steep a learning curve as any other development environment.

Learning to do the same in Linux and getting to grips with the toolchain here has been equally hard, but ultimately more rewarding. I am able to tailor the system to my favourite way of working and use my own personal best editor.

Ontop of this, in microsoft land if you encounter a problem with a core library there is no way to find out why or work round it, everything you do is at arms length.
In linux I can go as far as I need and am able to offer suggestions and patches to make it better for everyone.

If you want a nice rounded quick easier to digest devenv, fms is 100% right, python fills the gap between native and scripted languages nicely.

I personally want a large format tablet myself and I don't care what cpu or battery life it has, it will be running Linux and will be used to create the big daddy for liqbase and to test all this clutter stuff without the horrid non-interaction of a mouse