How do I create a free C# development environment

For personal projects I cannot use my work-licence of Visua开发者_运维技巧l Studio Professional at home.

Visual Studio Express just seem less appealing than the professional edition, what are my alternatives except notepad?

MonoDevelop and SharpDevelop are only two options, though even the Express edition of Visual Studio seems to have more features (and is more familiar to those using the Pro/Ultimate editions).

A number of programming text editors have C# syntax highlighting and you can invoke the compiler with key bindings (that you will need to configure yourself), though a dedicated IDE would make a better experience. Notepad++ is one such editor.

Notepad++? :)

More seriously though, there are free C# IDE's out there, such as SharpDevelop however I have always preferred Visual Studio myself.

One open source alternative is SharpDevelop.

Edit: And as Kyle pointed out, I too prefer Visual Studio above anything else.