It's a fair question, my guess is that it's a great beginners IDE for multiple languages. You can quickly get up and running with all major languages, and it was one of the first products Microsoft made multiplatform and free. I'm neutral about it, it works fine for getting the job done. I'm a bit disappointed that it's ssh plugin craps out over 200MB of detritus on each remote machine it connects to. But the ability to edit remotely is a neat feature.