It has been a while since I have had to do much work in .NET since we started our migration towards Open Source tools about 10 months ago. Today I had to deploy a .NET site and I was amazed at how long it took me compared to deploying a Rails site. By the time I had created a new copy of the .NET site, cleaned out the code-behind files, ftp'd it to the server, and tested the new site approximately thirty minutes had passed. That was thirty minutes that clients could not access the site. In a Rails deploy, I upload everything to a new folder and symlink it when ready so the switch is nearly instant. I am glad we have finally decided to move away from the Microsoft EnTARprise Strength tools and move towards a set of tools that get the job done the way it should be.