Free
Open Source Alternative to Visual Studio 2012
So you don't believe in Microsoft and Visual Studio.
You do not believe in paying for software. You're one of the firm believers of
open source and free communities. So are we at C# Corner. We are building C#
Corner to keep it clean and free with very minimal or no ads, whatsoever.
Visual Studio 2012 RC was announced yesterday and it
is available to download now. Microsoft announced that it may not have a free
Express version to build Windows desktop applications in Visual Studio 2012.
So, what are other alternative tools to Visual Studio
2012? There are two good tools out there that are available absolutely free and
open source.
MonoDevelop 3.0 is an open source IDE for building C#
and other .NET applications. MonoDevelop is an IDE primarily designed for C#
and other .NET languages. MonoDevelop enables developers to quickly write
desktop and ASP.NET Web applications on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. MonoDevelop
makes it easy for developers to port .NET applications created with Visual Studio
to Linux and to maintain a single code base for all platforms.
Download MonoDevelop 3.0 here:
http://monodevelop.com/Download
#develop (SharpDevelop) is another free open source
IDE for C# developers.
Download SharpDevelop here:
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Download/
Are these tools any good? How do they fair compare to
Visual Studio 2012?
Well, they may not be as good as Visual Studio 2012
and they may not provide as many features as Visual Studio 2012 has but they
are very good. They are very good to start learning and building your
applications using C#.
If you are a student and do not have any money to
spend on Visual Studio 2012, these are perfect tool for you. Give them a try
and decide yourself.