During one of the podcasts I believe Jeff stated that he was able to get free copies of the most expensive version of Visual Studio from a friend at MS.
Jeff Attwood and co that built it are used to .Net/MS/Visual Studio development, so for them the cost was probably small compared to the cost of switching stacks + tools.
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If your team is comfortable with Microsoft's stack, why force them to learn Java/python?
Well, they other options are open. So it might make sense. :P
Microsoft's stack adds a not-insignificant cost to a 3-4 person bootstrapped startup's budget.
Up to you whether or not you're getting enough of a productivity gain to justify it.
Visual studio express editions are free and a windows vps is cheap.
Even if you decide to spring for the full developer licenses you are looking at less than a week of a developers salary for some really good tools.
During one of the podcasts I believe Jeff stated that he was able to get free copies of the most expensive version of Visual Studio from a friend at MS.
How much would SQL Server licenses cost?
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt:
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/express/default.mspx
If you are a startup you can probably get Microsoft's software for free.
Talk to one of their technology evangelists, they love seeing cutting edge companies building their business on MS.
Anand Iyer, http://blogs.msdn.com/aniyer/, can point you in the right direction.
Jeff Attwood and co that built it are used to .Net/MS/Visual Studio development, so for them the cost was probably small compared to the cost of switching stacks + tools.
The MS stack also has lots of good tools which can help speed up development.