Microsoft would be foolish to not give away free developer tools. You don't need to purchase anything to use .NET; you can download an ide that comes with a C#, VB.NET, C++/CLI compilers off the bat:<p><a href="http://www.microsoft.com/exPress/" rel="nofollow">http://www.microsoft.com/exPress/</a><p>And besides that, you can get compilers for F#, J#, IronPython, IronRuby, etc.