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ALT.NET - Alternative tools and approaches to mainstream .NET

There's starting to be a lot of talk lately about working in an alternative way than the "mainstream" prescribed ways which most .NET and MS developers use in their day to day work. I'm still working out on my own what does it mean, and the difference facets in this concept, but one thing is for sure - there is *something* out there which people are getting a hold of, and MS seems to be missing great deals of it. here are some points(Some overlaps, for sure):

Update and clarifications:

  • I don't necessarily agree with the list here. It is what I see in other people. I'll post my thoughts on this later.
  • Some items are grouped and compared not on a technical level, but on a logical or categorized level. For example, comparing open source, SourceForge to Application Blocks and codeplex -the two are both open source in one way or another, but the ones on the right are MS-oriented, the left are not. So the right isn't necessarily the inverse of what's on the left. It may just as well be the same idea. Just seems to me it is less "hot" than the one on the right.
Hot Not
Castle, ActiveRecord,
NHibernate
DataSets, Dataset Designer, Entity Framework, MS Application Blocks
MVC,NUnit,MonoRail Web Forms, SCSF, VSTS, MSTest
XP, TDD, Scrum MSF Agile, MSF For CMMI
Evolutionary Design and Development Big Design Up Front
Ruby + IronRuby, Python + IronPyton, DLR, Silverlight(?) ?
OR\M (NHibernate, LLBLGen  etc..) DLinq, Data Access Block, DataSets, Plain ADO. NET
Open Source (Mono, SourceForge) Application Blocks, CodePlex
MVC and MVP (RoR, MonoRail..) Web Forms, CAB, Smart Client Factory
CVS, SVN VSS, VSTS Source Control
Build Automation and CI
(CI Factory, NAnt, FinalBuilder, CruiseControl..)
Team Build
TDD and Unit Testing
NUnit, MbUnit, RhinoMocks, NMock, TypeMock
MSTest for unit testing, VSTS
Subtext, DasBlog, WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, FeedBurner Microsoft MSN Spaces, Community Server(?)
Simplicity in Design P&P
Working at Google Working at MS
Google Gears Smart Client, MS Ajax
.NET 3.X (WF, WPF. Silverlight) .NET 2.0
DI, IoC, Spring for .NET Object Builder
Conferences:
OSCon, RubyCon, Code Camps, DevTeach..
VSLive, TechEd, DevConnections..
 
Am I missing something?

Running Matlab, Python and Tcl scripts from .NET

Is Google Gears a Disaster Waiting to Happen?