Several months ago I blogged about the need for a much simpler way to get into .NET, and I named my proposed solution VBScript.NET (in hindsight the name was a poor choice because people assumed I was proposing porting VBScript to .NET instead of providing a simplified VB.NET, but highsight often is 20/20…) And I was not the only one, lots of others blogged about the same topic (see here, here, here, here, here, and here to list a few.)
It looks like Microsoft was listening after all! Check out the New Visual Studio Express products, in beta at this point! I haven’t downloaded any of them yet, and I don’t know if they’ll address all the issues my proposal was meant to address, but even if not at least they are trying!
Kudos Microsoft!
UPDATE (2007-01-01): I’ve since come to the conclusion that the Express Edition still does not address the needs of the occupational programmer.