From MS .NET to Web development options on Mac OS X

Question

I'm a .NET web developer, who's bought a Mac, and is interested in doing web development natively on the Mac.

I've never developed outside of the Microsoft sandbox, and I'm looking for something new, but still in web development.

I've looked into Mono, but it looks like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, am I wrong? Like for example, I can't do breakpoints on my web apps?

Here are my criteria:

• say what you will about Microsoft, but I'm simply not interested in command-line setups, or weird configuration stuff, I just want it to work
• I'll need a powerful IDE, as good as Visual Studio 2008. I'm particularly fond of IntelliSense, auto-correction, auto-completion, and how it all hangs togethere, and the debugging features
• I know this isn't "cool", but I love strongly typed languages. I find the dynamic aspect of the next generation .NET languages really cool, but I like how it sits within a static world. I know I know, dynamic is cool, but I like strong typing OK, it brings peace to my mind.
• I can definitely do without all the .NET controls, and page life cycle, I'm happy to do the front-end myself, I just want the back-end part to be as friendly, and high level as ASP.NET.
• Oh, and I love all the reflection, generics, and functional stuff, especially LINQ, in C# and VB.NET.

Any ideas?

UPDATE

I appreciate any help. But just to make it clear, I'm not interested in VM solutions. To do .NET I'll just Boot Camp into Windows. I'm looking to develop natively on Mac OS X. If I'm wrong about Mono, that would be the best thing.

Otherwise something new might be fun.

UPDATE

I decided to have a look at Scala, and for fun, although it isn't web dev, AIR apps too. I tried Mono, but the IDE is still in Beta, and there's no way to use breakpoints in debugging, which is an unnecessary pain.

I am going to look at Scala, and maybe some Java frameworks too.

Answer 1

Why not just use VMWare or parallels.

I run Visual Studio in VMWare (on windows 2008 server) runs well

Answer 2

I'd look to run Visual Studio under a VM on OSX if I were you. If you're not doing fancy WPF stuff, then your development/deployment experience will be the same.

Answer 3

I read some interesting articles about Scala - But I haven't tried it myself yet.
It uses static typing and also has functional features.
There is a TextMate bundle for it and also Netbeans seems to offer good Scala support.

Answer 4

I would definitely take a look at Mono on OSX. There's tons of tools and you don't have to be a command line guy to use it.

• For an IDE take a look at MonoDevelop which can now do iPhone development
• MonoDevelop is built on top of Gtk# which is a great GUI toolkit
• Another GUI would be to WinForms, but I've never been a big fan

As for web development you can still use MonoDevelop with any of the normal toolkits:

• WebForms
• ASP.NET MVC
• Silverlight / Moonlight
• etc

For the server you can use Apache, lighttpd, etc - pick your poison!

Perhaps I'm biased as I've been using Mono since before the 0.3 days, but I'm and fan and it's definitely not like "fitting a square peg into a round hole". It has it's own libraries and ways of doing things and support for almost all of the .NET stack.

Answer 5

If you're not interested in command line setups or weird config stuff then web development is probably not the right career for you. Stick to .NET if you're averse to learning.

Answer 6

Given the constraints, I think you would be happiest with Java. It is statically typed, has good IDEs (IntelliJ, Eclipse, NetBeans) and is used a lot for web.