As Rob mentions, ASP.NET WebForms needs to go. It's always a bad choice and it makes it confusing to a lot of developers which of the 3 official MS frameworks they should pick. Dump WebForms and adopt 1 framework for simple stuff (WebMatrix) and 1 for more complex stuff (ASP.NET MVC).
They are also behind by half a decade when it comes to hosting. ec2 is the only thing keeping them in it, and that's at a cost. Even some of the recent hosting initiatives (AppHarbor, EpicWinHosting) are, at best, going to take years to catch up. This is especially true when you take SQL Server into account (SQL Express sucks, deal with it).
WebMatrix is a step in the right direction, but they need to address their messaging, increase their focus, and resolve the hosting gap.
But it's faster in pico seconds (meaning it's immeasurably faster) and if you're worried on that level - you're doin it wrong :).
ASP.NET done right actually feels a lot more MVC than ASP.NET MVC. You can still route whatever paths you want, but you get to use actual files where files make sense. And you get to sanely base your pages on a common class, and you can manipulate properties on your HTML from the backend. It's the best of both, really, since all the fun stuff from MVC got poured into ASP.NET too.
I still do MVC work for clients, but as of now, new project stuff where I'm spending my own time (and therefore money) still gets done in regular old ASP.NET.
If you outgrow that level of hosting, go Azure or colo your own machines.
Then you get access to nicer frameworks like Lift, Play, et al with the associated free and open source infrastructure.
I'm talking about production environments. I do myself use WinXP for development, because I'm forced by other tools I must use; but my current production env is Ubuntu.
WebMatrix is a compilation of technologies that MS has put out over the past few years. Off the top of my head, they include: Visual Studio Web Developer Express, SQL Server Express, IIS Express (which is IIS stand-alone, but bundled with WebMatrix, so don't hold your breath for a stand-alone distributable of IIS, which would be real awesome).
Recently, MS released the Web Platform Installer WPI, which is a master installer that checks for the existence of IIS, .NET 2,3.5&4, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server Express, then installs and configures those applications if they are not there. It actually works most of the time, and does a good job registering ASP.NET into IIS.
Additionally, the WPI will read a default RSS feed from MS, which publishes popular Open Source IIS applications, like CMS, Blog and ECommerce systems. WPI can be configured to read third-party RSS feeds. These applications are installed with default settings, or really the settings they had when a developer used MS's web deployment wizard, or web package builder to create them -- dig too deep into this technology, and you'll get woozy quick.
Having spent a month building an installer for an enterprise ASP.NET application, and watching it fail 50% of the time due to ACL restrictions, I can say that WPI and it's deployment packages are an ambitious task, and they've done pretty well.
Now, MS has an package manager for OSS projects called NuGet, which is like apt-get, I suppose. I've seen it begin to crop up on git hub. Hard core OSSers will find this all odd: a whole ecosystem being built and advocated by MS, around open source software which will, Mono aside, only run on closed MS operating systems. Let's face it, if it weren't for internal big-corp enterprise software, ASP.NET would have a much less prevalent developer base then it does now. I can't see internal enterprise projects being managed like they are OSS projects: running their own RSS feeds for packages and NuGet servers for library dependences, so I don't know how popular NuGet will become, but many of these new technologies do make my day job easier.
Then just to get started, I ran some really simple T-SQL scripts about logons, users, and permissions. Soon SQL Server got sick and wouldn't query, uninstall, repair, reinstall, or install, and for SQL Server the usual Windows System Restore wouldn't. Apparently Microsoft has something over 10,000 reports of SQL Server getting sick and then refusing to uninstall. Then the only solution is to reinstall all the software on the boot partition.
Net, such nonsense cost me MONTHS last year. Pissed? No, I'm not pissed. Long ago I was WAY passed just pissed, and I'm MUCH more than pissed now.
WebMatrix won't solve such problems but claims to solve problems I don't have: Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, .NET, and T-SQL have all been fast, fun, and easy to use. There is NO reason for me struggle with at best poorly documented GUI nonsense and another layer of garbage to cause problems and keep me from knowing what is going on. WebMatrix looks like an unanesthetized root canal procedure, and I won't submit to it.
For progress, Microsoft needs to take all their documentation, throw it out, all of it, and start over. I mean this quite literally and very seriously. Then they need to fix SQL Server, e.g., the fact that it won't uninstall, and especially fix the new security model first in the 2005 version which is badly broken and which apparently so far no one inside Microsoft or outside understands -- literally.
As it stands, from the information readily available, it appears that no serious computing should have anything at all to do with SQL Server.
Ease of use of SQL Server administration and management is less credible than virginity in a dirt cheap whore house.
http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appid=webm...
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I think you need brackets to tell the parser when the code ends if you're building expressions.
