Learning ASP.NET MVC on Mac OS X
I realize this is a bit insane, C# being a Windows language and all, but I want to start learning C# mostly because I'm interested in ASP.NET MVC. I work as a web developer by day and my office is completely run on *nix machines. The developers and all other staff use Mac OS X and our servers are all some variation of Linux.
To be honest I just want to try something different than PHP, Python, or Ruby. The catch is that I don't want to give up my beloved Mac OS X. I've looked at Mono a bit and it seems like exactly what I am looking for. Unfortunately MonoDevelop is very slow to the point of uselessness on Mac OS X. (Unless I'm doing something wrong which is entirely plausible).
So my question boils down to this: What is the best way to code and compile C# apps on Mac OS X. (Running the code is not that big of issue, I'll probably just get some cheap server space to run my ASP.NET MVC apps on. I'm not really looking to run any apps on Mac OS X.)
Answer
In my own experience as a C#/Windows/ASP.Net developer the greatest strength of the platform is the integration with the tools. That said it is difficult to get it all running on mono. Mono would be an excellent deployment platform. But if you want to learn asp.net MVC your best bet is to set up a virtual Windows environment and get the free visual web developer visual studio: http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/ .
The other reason is that if you're trying to learn the platform, most resources will use some variant of Visual Studio. I find it rather difficult to try and learn a framework and have to struggle with platform differences at the same time.
I say this as an avid OS X user that has done C# development for several years and has done several small projects in asp.net mvc.