I'm from a PHP background and I write all my code in a nice text editor.  I'm kind of used to it now and I like it that way but it's not going to be long before I will have to start writing .NET.  May I just ask, does everybody do it in Visual Studio or do the Pro's use text editors?  I'm completely new to this, so excuse me if my question sounds mental.  I have used Visual Studio before and it felt like Dreamweaver and It felt wrong but if that's how it is, then then that's how it is.  Maybe it's something to do with it having to be compiled.

Cheers.

Using Dreamweaver is how I used to write PHP and HTML.  By using a text editor I learned how to write PHP and HTML properly.  By using a text editor I can write much better code than Dreamweaver so using Dremweaver now feels wrong.  Visual Studio feels like Dreamweaver so Visual Studio feels wrong etc...

Does anybody else use a text editor to write .NET?  Is it possible?  Or is using a text editor for .NET a daft idea in the first place?  Sorry but I know virtually nothing about it.

BTW what's ASPX?  Is that .NET?

Jonny:

One word, Intellisense.  The complexity of doing almost any programming with today's technologies, like ASP.Net, is just too great to rely on a cool text editor alone.  That used to be a bragging point for some hard core programmers but it just doesn't make sense any more.  Those "hard core" programmers were not necessarily any good or very productive (I have managed a few of them in my career).  You will be exponentially more productive, and will learn about the ASP.Net and DNN architectures with one of the true development tools like Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 or even the free tools from the Express family (which you can get here http://www.microsoft.com/express/product/default.aspx).

ASPX is the default file extension for the ASP.Net "basic" page, there are other extensions by the way, like ASCX for user controls.  ASPX comes from Active Server Pages, the X I guess is for eXtended.  Notice that there is basically no resemblance between classic ASP and ASPX, only the first three letters are alike and nothing else.

By the way, I don't consider doing HTML, even in a text editor, coding, just my opinion, I'm a Computer Science major.

Carlos