Microsoft Visual Studio and Other Cloud Development Environments

Today, most new (full-bodied) applications are developed for the enterprise either using Microsoft�s .Net architecture with Visual Studio or in the C++, Java or Python languages using other tools. Simpler projects or parts of projects may be coded in PHP or PERL (CGI scripts), and run in a J2EE container, if necessary, so they can integrate well with Java; they may also be coded in JavaScript. Some developers are fanatical about C# and Ruby. Considerable in-house development is done with cascading style sheets (CSSs) and ASP.Net, a Web framework. ASP.Net applications need to be hosted on a Windows hosting provider; there are many.

Programs developing with .Net tools will (after recompilation) run most directly in the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. They also will run in the cloud on a Windows virtual server. C++ produced with Microsoft tools is, of course, compatible with that produced by other C++ compilers.

Visual Studio is probably the most popular enterprise development tool. The latest version, Visual Studio 2010 is a single development environment for Windows, Web, Cloud, Office and Sharepoint development. Built-in languages include C/C++ (using Visual C++), VB.NET (using Visual Basic .NET), C# (via Visual C#), and F#. Support for other languages such as M, Python, and Ruby, among others, is available via language services installed separately. It also supports XML/XSLT, HTML/ XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Visual Studio 2010 is packaged in a range of editions for different needs.

Source of Information : Implementing and Developing Cloud Computing Applications 2011