Well that's alright, then (I think)

I've just read this article about Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition. This seems to sugest that VS 2005 is going to have a cut-price, slightly limited functionality cheapskates version, without having to resort to the Express edition.

There are several reasons why I think this is a good thing, First and foremost is that, although I develop for fun, writing things that I find interesting, rather than things I have to write, and all that, I would one day like to do it for money. My perception of the express edition dev tools is that they're quite a bit different to VS in how they're used, as well as what they do. If i have a limited functionality version of VS that works the same, just has less features, then I can move quite smoothly rfom one version to the other.

The second reason is that I use some of the things that (I gather) you can't do in a single express edition product, you have to download and use more than 1 simultaneously. For instance, there have been a few times where I've developed a web app in conjunction with a smart-client app as well as a backend class library. That's where it gets (I think) quite fun. As far as I know, I wouldn't really be able to do this so easily in the express edition products.

Yes, yes, yes. I'm the first person to admit that I haven't used any of the express tools. I don't know first hand what I'm talking about. I'm just going from what I've read. If I'm wrong, then please, someone let me know.

When I heard about the Express ed's, I was a bit concerned that it would mean the death of the affordable version of VS, which I was a bit upset about. I'm feeling a bit better about it now.

Just wanted to share.