Thanks for the update -- haven't looked at these tools for quite a while. I stand corrected, gladly :-)
BTW, VS 2010 has a pretty good set of visual XAML designers for WPF, Silverlight, etc. Yeah, it's about time.
>I'm sorry I can't agree with your assessment. Although, I believe the best IDE is the VS the others that are available are very good. In fact I believe the best visual editor is not VS but the QT designer. You can do more and and get a more pleasing GUI for your app than with VS's fixed control - winforms. But let's look at what is available for the other languages.
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>Java
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>Netbeans 6+ is very close to VS in every way.
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>Eclipse - again has most of what VS has and like Netbeans has plug-ins. I like the SWT (a GUI).
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>But both require GUI programming for a special look.
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>Python
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>PyQT, PY-GTK +, WxPython are graphic lib's. None have IDE's near VS. But can use their underlying tools i.e. QT designer, the GTK designer, etc.. I hand code my GUI (using Dabo) and I tell you it takes twice the time to create as it did with VFP. Still just like VFP it's code behind the GUI that takes the time.
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>Johnf