Hi, VS.NET by MicroSoft is an important tool to design applications. it is new, fast, stable and hot product in the IT market. it is the only application in the market that can build a web service application from scratch to final release. thou web service is a new concept, in a few year from now, web service will be an important part of doing business. a new network creation ( like the internet) is in the process of formation. webservice can be done on Sun One software too but it is not user freindly as VS.NET. it is difficult to say which will win the web service race. on one side is MicroSoft and on the other side is SUN, IBM and Oracle.
Back to VS.NET
to write applications on the web, u can write application using the language u are comfarable with. for example u can write web-based application in C++, pascal, COBOL, VB, even JAVA, the VS.NET framework supports in converting these codes at run-time into a Machinee readable form. it also provides a new language called C# ( C Sharp) which is basically used for writing web service. C# is almost java.
very good language for writting application.
as VS.NET is a MicroSoft product , it supports all the function of a typical MicroSoft product for ex F5 for run, Control -S for save etc. for a MicroSoft user, the learning curve for using VS.NET is very fast.