wrt VS.NET, haven't written C++ code with it but all the managed C++
stuff looks ugly as hell to me, so I wouldn't be surprised if the C++
experience sucked. However, for C# code, VS.NET is very nice,
especially version 2005 with its refactoring support, code snippets and
IntelliSense. There isn't an open-source/linux IDE that can hold a
candle to Visual Studio (6.0 - 2005) and that's a fact.