CNET News.com outlines Microsoft's strategy for Visual Studio 2005 in the article Microsoft reaches beyond professional programmers. The interesting part for many of us will be the announcement of the "Express" editions that are aimed at nonprofessional programmers (hobbyists, etc).

Among the different flavors, VWD (Visual Web Developer) will be the one that I think will have the most impact in the marketplace: writing ASP.NET Web applications will be easier than ever before.

SQL Express will make quite a splash too.