Rory is writing about hobbyists, and how Microsoft shouldn't cater to them. The comments show some interesting, and rather opinionated, responses. I think they all seriously underestimate the number, and importance, of the hobbyist. There are several points:

• Anything you do in your spare time is technically a hobby. If you're a professional developer and code in the evenings that's a hobby. I know there's a big difference between bobbyists and professionals doing their day job in the evenings for fun, but bear with me.
• Do you use the same tools for your hobby coding? Did you buy a copy of VS.NET Professional so that you could program in the evening? It's an expensive tool, and whether or not you're a professional developer, it's probably too expensive to buy just for some light (or heavy depending upon your viewpoint) in the evenings.
• There's a big difference between hobbyists and beginners. There are plenty of people who are experienced developers by coming to the platform ffor the first time. Sure there's pain, but that's part of learning. Why shouldn't Microsoft make that pain slightly less. All the drag 'n' drop, easy data binding stuff really seems to get people annoyed, but if you don't like it don't use it. This is aimed at beginners - the hobbyists don't use VS, they use things like Web Matrix. Actually, it's not just aimed at beginners - it's aimed at people who want to get things done quickly - application prototyping is really easy when you've got a tool that allows this sort of development.
• Catering to existing VB programmers is sound commercially. VB 6 books are still seelling well, so that tends to indicate there is a string market. And incidently the top two selling books that Wrox ever produced were Beginner books - the market for beginners is very big.
• Don't assume that because Microsoft has made VS easier that it's being dumbed down. You have to look underneath the skin - there's a heck of a lot more to Whidbey that just a few fancy features in the tool.

  Rant over