Someone reviewed v on Jul 5, 2022

Pros: 555

Cons: 555

Bottom Line: 555

Ain Soph Aur reviewed v3.0.0.3037 Beta on Jun 27, 2008

WOW, i love it! :D
im a private user, so its absolutely sufficient.

maybe not so good: only support for .NET framework 2.0 ?!?

spiked reviewed v3.0.0.3037 Beta on Apr 19, 2008

Although the Visual Studio Express Editions are incredible freebies, they suffer from 2 major annoyances. First, although you can download and install multiple products, they remain separate environments. You're either doing C# development OR VB.net development. That's because they use the "isolated mode" of the VS Shell Runtime. In contrast, the full VS is a single environment where you can seemlessly switch and combine products by choosing different project templates and options. Secondly, instead of having the same UI in the free and full editions (perhaps just graying out the functionality not available in free, or removing those menu items and dialogs while keeping the rest organized the same), MS greatly simplified (i.e. "dumbed down") the UI in Express Editions. If you need to switch back and forth (e.g. you use Pro Edition at work but Express at home for personal/hobby or you occasionally need to help a child or friend who is learning with Express) you often find that Express is just different enough to make common tasks frustrating.

Then there's SharpDevelop, a free environment which (as of 3.0) readily integrates languages from C# to F#, OSS tools such as TortoiseSVN (for source control) and WIX (for installers), and support for a wider range of .net versions than any given version of VS. Although SharpDevelop definitely appeals more to personal usage than enterprise, it has not been dumbed down or intentionally limited in any way.

SharpDevelop was the basis for MonoDevelop, so it's even better than VS if you want to ensure compatibility with Mono for running your .net code on Linux or Mac OS X. Even when you're using VS, there are components in SharpDevelop like the Reports which you may find useful as standalone tools.

Drawbacks to SharpDevelop include a lag in supporting .net improvements (SharpDevelop introduced beta-level compatibility with .net 3.5 about 3 months after VS shipped production-level support for .net 3.5), disruptive shifts due to dependence on other OSS projects which stall or become commercial (such as the replacement of NDoc and NCover with Sandcastle and PartCover), and general incompleteness if you need total equivalence to all VS capabilities (such as an integrated web forms designer and extensive database tools).

Furthermore, with the VS 2008 Shell Runtime, MS is now providing liberal redistribution license and flexible API which has enabled projects like the IronPythonStudio IDE to go from idea to release very quickly and for projects like Phalanger (a .net compiler for the PHP language) to instantly gain a free IDE, somewhat obsoleting SharpDevelop's more monolithic approach, at least for Windows. Projects adopting the VS Shell Runtime approach can take advantage of many add-ins written for VS, while SharpDevelop can only use add-ins written specifically for SharpDevelop.

gvanlee reviewed v3.0.0.2970 Beta 1 on Apr 11, 2008

It's good, but it ain't perfect. I used it in between two versions of Visual Studio and found it to be lacking of some (to me) important features. Since the Express editions of VS are free now, the standards are pretty high.

Don Juan reviewed v1.1.0.2118 RC on Dec 14, 2005

Great piece of development software. This build seems to have corrected some of the little quirks.

gawd21 reviewed v1.1.0.2081 September Beta Refresh on Sep 28, 2005

I like this. It's small and does a great job.

DiGiTaLFX reviewed v1.1.0.1964 Beta Resfresh on May 21, 2005

Fab! Its an IDE with useful stuff, but not bloated with useless tools etc. Love it!

LordNikon reviewed v1.1.0.1913 Beta on Apr 29, 2005

#Develop is very well done IDE for the .NET framework. I can't wait for 1.1Final.

johnk119 reviewed v1.1.0.1913 Beta on Apr 29, 2005

This is a great development set. It's free and is capable of autocompleting the names of commonly used namespaces and methods

Twintop reviewed v1.1.0.1858 Preview on Apr 15, 2005

It works well for new projects, but conversions from Visual Studio 2003 .NET sometimes change alignment of objects in the form in the design window. All in all, #Develop handles everything I need to do with C# and VB.NET. I can't wait for a final release of this revision (this is a preview release, after all. ^^)

exhibit reviewed v1.1.0.1858 Preview on Apr 14, 2005

Not enough functionality in it yet to be called a competitor to VS, but seems to be well on the way. Hopefully future releases will fill in the gaps to make this worth writing an application with.

drub reviewed v1.1.0.1858 Preview on Apr 14, 2005

Absolutley amazing, I just started learning C# and #D was the tool I started with, now I do not want to use any other tool, as I am getting so comfortable with #D, great job guys. I hope to see coloring blocks and readonly blocks soon :-) (I know i can read-only the Initialize Component() already) :-)

KAK reviewed v1.1.0.1858 Preview on Apr 14, 2005

Very Good alternate to Visual Studio / .NET
the Handling is very nice no Performence problem
I test it on Pentium III 500 MHZ 256-SD-Ram
S-ATA H.D.D no bugs found fast "EXE" Creation
on this "Old omputer °_°"

BEST FREEWARE FOR ALL DEVELOPER TRY iT

wagner reatto reviewed v1.0.3.1768 on Jan 17, 2005

each new release, better!

bwets reviewed v1.0.3.1761 on Dec 27, 2004

Still disapointing. Flickering IDE; quite unstable althought doesnt seam to crash; Little options; Slow (more than VS, even on P4 2.6/1Gb mem); proprietary solution format (that seams nuts) and more.
Let's give it another year to prove its point.

beast64 reviewed v1.0.0.1543 on Sep 15, 2004

Well, It's getting better an better..and still FREE ;-)

wagner reatto reviewed v1.0.0.1543 on Sep 12, 2004

of course, SharpDevelop is not so complicated(!?) as VS, but it will be a free alternative, the 'thing' just was born!!!

beast64 reviewed vFidalgo RC3 on Aug 24, 2004

Well I don't think that's a match for VS .NET, but I think it's suitable for beginners, especialy students since it's free.

beldin reviewed vFidalgo RC2 on Jul 1, 2004

#Develop has come a long way since 0.9x beta releases and rc2 makes it an exellent free alternative to Visual Studio.

bwets reviewed v0.99b on Mar 5, 2004

Im sorry to say this, but this new version is still so far from VSNET. Buggy, unstable lack of functionnalities... I know it is hard to compete with VSNET, but at this point, I see no use of #develop. Lets see in 1 year...

virtorio reviewed v0.99 on Feb 20, 2004

Good set of features, but lacks in terms of stability (crashed several times when trying to write a very simple WinForms application). If you looking to use it for personal use I would suggest Borland's Free C#Builder Personal Edition. Also, as said below, its not like MS Visual C# is expensive.

PiotrZagawa reviewed v0.98 on Oct 24, 2003

Are you joking, buds ?
For them, who talking, so Visual Studio is 1000x cheaper :-) I tell you: you can still buy Visual Studio.NET C# Standard, for less than 80$. It is little price, for really great, fast, customizable, best IDE (with full MSDN library) on the world. SharpDevelop is written in C#, so it works too slowly for me. Besides, has less features, is unstable at more complicated projects. SharpDevelop is good, but only for learning, nothing more.

babyapartnership reviewed v0.96 on Aug 23, 2003

SharpDevelop is a great free .NET development suite-looks lot like VS.NET but one exception-it can be used on Windows 9.x unlike VS.NET.

netean reviewed v0.92 Beta on Oct 26, 2002

great little tool this.
with each new version it becomes more and more like visual Studio.net but without any of the bloat.
Only 3 criticisms though:
1 - the form designer doesn't seem to have been created (yet) for vb.net
2 - The menu animations are chronically slow on my p2-500
3 - no real support for web development (asp.net, using c#, vb or others)

the latter would be an absolute godsend for me, but I'm not holding my breath as web development isn't really what this is all about. it's a tool for building .net apps. And that it does very well indeed.
And it's free, what more do you want?
:)

DigitalSin reviewed v0.92 Beta on Oct 25, 2002

Now that #Develop has an awesome forms designer, code complete is..well, complete it seems, this IDE is fantastic!

Now I think it can be taken seriously, it certainly has my stamp of approval now.

bigb reviewed v0.90 Beta on Sep 6, 2002

i think this is a real good IDE for programming in C#!!

I tried Visual Studio .NEt but it´s not my thing, so i took #develop!!
The new version look and reacts a little bit like VS.NET, i think!!
For example: the toolbars on the left side!! (hides automatically, like in VS.NET)!!

But it´s cool that #develop is freeware!
I´ll only use this program

BIG B

Zyion reviewed v0.88b on May 30, 2002

I have programmed WinForm apps using this program before. Hell, when I am using VC++, I rarely if ever used the dialog editor when comming up with my GUI's. So, I dont really see the lack of a form editor as a major downfall, as you can still implement it all via code.

DigitalSin reviewed v0.88b on May 29, 2002

One of those programs that is really just a 'neat' tool. Other than being a proof of concept that the .NET framework is independant of the IDE, its really pretty useless since theres no form designer. Might be ok if all you plan to do is a console app.

Pr0xY reviewed v0.88a Beta on Apr 25, 2002

great program, my only complaint is that it doesn't seem to support Visual Studio .NET projects. Since these are in a standard XML format support should be difficult, also support for C++ development would be nice.

Cure110 reviewed v0.88a Beta on Apr 24, 2002

yes, freeware can be this good.

danny_boy reviewed v0.87a Beta on Jan 24, 2002

This IDE is pretty good - not quite as nice - but $1000 cheaper than Visual Studio it is all you need to code simple, tight .NET code. Thumbs up