Is there a Mac alternative to Visual Studio Express?

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+2 Q:

Is there a Mac alternative to Visual Studio Express?

I've just started programming in VB.Net and don't want to use Dreamweaver to do it all.

I use a Mac for all my other work like design work and coding in Dreamweaver but would like to know if there is an alternative to Visual Studio Express so that I can do all my vb.net stuff on the mac too.

Any suggestions?

+3 A:

You might consider Mono / MonoDevelop.

martin clayton 2010-10-29 12:39:58

+3 A:

Unfortunately, there is no usable VB support for OS X. The Mono VB compiler has serious bugs and doesn’t implement the most recent language standard anyway.

It can only be considered experimental and unfortunately it’s not usable in real work.

The Mono C# compiler, on the other hand, is ready for prime-time and up to date with the current C# specification. What’s more, MonoDevelop has recently become quite stable and usable on OS X (apart from some minor glitches) so developing C# is quite enjoyable.

Konrad Rudolph 2010-10-29 12:45:59

I've taken over someone else's work and they programmed everything in VB.Net so I don't think I can get away from that now

Jamie Taylor 2010-10-29 12:48:29

@Jamie: automatic converters (e.g. [DeveloperFusion’s](http://www.developerfusion.com/tools/convert/vb-to-csharp/)) do a surprisingly good job. There will be some clean-up afterwards but this may still be the most affordable and practical way. There is simply **no way** to get VB to work on Mac (barring a virtual machine as suggested by Carlos).

Konrad Rudolph 2010-10-29 12:53:55

+2 A:

If you're working in an OSX computer, maybe you should consider creating a VM to have your "Visual Studio" running there. Check VirtualBox or Parallels. You can also use BootCamp to create a new partition with Windows.

Carlos Tasada 2010-10-29 12:51:16

ansaurus

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Is there a Mac alternative to Visual Studio Express?

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