Question

I have been reading a bit about Web Matrix, I like the simpleness of it. But should I even bother if I am already using VS2010 pro? I was thinking maybe for small clients that want a simple site with a blog it may make things quicker? Is it worth looking more into?

And if I do make a simple site with wordpress with web matrix, I should still be able to host it on an apache server, even though web matrix is a microsoft product?

thanks!

Answer 1

The question could use some tweaking. You’re asking which IDE to use, but you you really mean simple – (Web Pages and or Packages like WordPress) vs complex – traditional ASP.Net (Web Forms and or MVC).

That said, Microsoft is acknowledging the various minimalist movements going on in their community. People are rejecting the idea that the complexity of the ASP.Net, WCF, IoC, DDD is necessary in every project.

Out of this movement you see projects like OpenRasta and OWIN are pushing for simpler servers and services. While projects like Nancy look to simplify the application stack. And dapper and massive both are attempts to simplify data access.

Microsoft’s answers to this are asp.net web pages, supporting php, and things like WCF Web API.

For your own direction, you need to decide if the benefit of having a simpler option is worth the effort of learning multiple frameworks (say web pages for simple and mvc for complex), or if you want to only know one framework and pay a productivity penalty when putting the proverbial square peg in a round hole.