Feel free to tell me if I'm wrong, but you have to run a windows server to run asp.net and that comes with a whole plethora of maintainance and security issues. There's also the cost factor, you know IIS, MS SQL, etc... If you want the whole M$ package. It gets expensive just to break into it, and even worse on maintainance, as you have to watch out for all those viruses and broken service packs. This is why people say Microsoft Sucks. So there is some technical merit to it.
I believe asp.net can be run on *nix via mono, and an apache mod. However, my experience with mono is that it sucks (I've never developped in it just use apps developped in it).
Other than advising against the M$ path on an administrative perspective, I can't really give you a fair comparison.
Sorry, but IIS is free (assuming you have Windows) and I'm coding .NET and MySQL as I write this. Oh, and I've never seen a server run by a proper IT admin get a virus - only people who use the server as a workstation get infected.
These days not much. Additionally, Visual Studio Express is free.
Splashup.com is .NET, IIS, Windows Server 2003 and MySQL. It's never crashed unless I've borked something and it's been through a Techcrunch, Lifehacker, and Digg on the same day.
While this is true for shared hosts, if you want to install on your own machine, run test and dev servers (virtualized or no) or cloud-host your app, there is still a very real cost to windows licenses.
Read up for the part where we discussed Visual Studio Express being free.
The amusing part about the free tools argument is that the cost of tools is such a non-concern in the professional world. I work for large customers on large projects and tools, whether they be Microsoft, Oracle or IBM, no one's worried about that.
Then again, you might be talking about little side projects, my frame of reference is mostly multi-million dollar systems.
Many people on HN are working for or on startups and bootstrapped projects. Implying any project concerned with the licensing cost is a little side project is disingenuous.
Even at large companies, all things being equal, having no licensing costs is a competitive advantage.
In 2008, the security argument tilts strongly in favor of Microsoft on this one. 37signals hasn't paid millions of dollars to have 10 different security research firms review the code and write penetration test cases and fuzzers. Microsoft started on IIS back in 2003.
I wouldn't use security as a deciding factor (we're a Rails shop), but if I did, I'd be writing C# now.
I believe asp.net can be run on *nix via mono, and an apache mod. However, my experience with mono is that it sucks (I've never developped in it just use apps developped in it).
Other than advising against the M$ path on an administrative perspective, I can't really give you a fair comparison.