Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

4.1. The Promise of Visual Studio

All .NET applications are built from plain-text source files. VB code is stored in .vb files and C# code is stored in .cs files, regardless of whether this code is designed for a stand-alone Windows application or the Web. Despite this fact, you'll rarely find VB or C# developers creating Windows applications by hand in a text editor. The process is not only tiring, but it also opens the door to a host of possible errors that a design tool could catch easily. The same is true for ASP.NET programmers. Although you can write your web page classes and code your web page controls by hand, you'll spend hours developing and testing your code. Instead, it makes sense to use one of the many editions of Visual Studio. ...