Livin' the life...

Captain's log, stardate 20070710, Eastern Caribbean Quadrant.. As I sit here building this web application for work, I am amazed at how "easy" MS has made things for us developers. I mean, dragging and dropping controls, nice pretty configuration screens and tools, directory security by access levels at the click of a couple rectangular buttons.. Does this happen in other languages? PHP? Coldfusion? I remember my stint with PHP and, yea.. it's super flexible and sure, it's free, but man.. I can't imagine developing the apps I do now in PHP.. especially not considering the time frame clients demand!

But of course, I know, there's a price for the beauty of (the l33t versions of) MS tools, and at times the price is as shocking as the tools themselves! But.. really, can one say that it is not worth it? Also noting the amount of tools (more coming in each new edition) and the support from places like ASP.NET Forums?

I'd like to see two development teams build the same web application, one a ASP.NET team and the other a PHP team... I wonder who'd do it faster and which one of them would produce the better quality (reliable, and such) product.

Please note though, I'm not bashing PHP, it's a very workable, free alternative and I totally love the dollars sign ($) to indicate variables .. lol .. I guess the drag and drop of MS tools have me.