Who knew you could make games with Visual Studio? MSDN’s Coding4Fun site has an entire section devoted to Game Development!
Until I saw this, I was under the impression that game development could only be achieved using C++ or a “beginning game programmer language” such as Dark Basic.
Looks like I was wrong! If I decide to get into computer game development again, I’ll definitely consider using Visual Basic or Visual C# as a balance between the power of C++ and the ease of use of Dark Basic.
According to a blog post on MSDN, Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition will be free permanently! 
From the blog post:
We are incredibly excited to announce that effective April 19th, 2006, all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions including Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual J#, Visual C++, and Visual Web Developer Express will be free permanently!
Prior to this pricing announcement, Visual Studio Express Editions were promotionally discounted to be free for one year, starting on November 7th, 2005. With this announcement, the promotional discount for Visual Studio Express is now permanent and Express will continue to be free.
The key reason for the pricing change was you. You’ve helped make Visual Studio Express a runaway hit, and we’re proud to announce that in the five months since its launch, Express has been downloaded over 5 million times!
Developers using Visual Studio 2005, especially those switching from Visual Studio .NET, will probably know that Visual Studio 2005 hides code produced in Design mode automatically. Although on Microsoft’s site this feature is called “Just My Code,” there is no reference to that phrase anywhere in the UI that I could tell.
I couldn’t find a solution on the Internet that worked, and I finally figured it out on my own. I thought I’d publish it here in case anyone else had the same problem. It’s really simple: just click View, then click Show All Files. In the Solution Explorer pane, a plus sign will appear next to Windows forms. Just click on the plus sign, then double-click on <formname>.Designer.vb (replacing <formname> with the form name, of course).
(FYI: Note that I found conflicting instructions on the Internet that said the option to disable Just My Code was in the Options dialog box. Perhaps that was only applicable to beta versions of Visual Studio 2005, or perhaps my solution only works with the Express Editions.)
WOW! I am simply blown away by the powerful new features planned for Visual Basic 9.0!
One awesome new feature is query comprehension, SQL style. Take the following sample code from the Microsoft website:
Dim SmallCountries = Select Country From Country In Countries Where Country.Population < 1000000
This creates a collection of Country objects called SmallCountries, but it only contains Country objects whose Population property is less than one million. Very powerful. Very exciting.
Considering Visual Basic 2005 (a.k.a. Visual Basic 8.0) included support for Office 2003-style menus and toolbars, I wouldn’t be surprised if Visual Basic 9.0 also included support for Ribbons from Office 12, as well as other Windows Vista integration features.
Wired News has an interesting article about some of the worst software bugs. One interesting note is that in the last bug example (the National Cancer Institute, on page 2), when the bug resulted in deaths, it was the software users (doctors) that were blamed, not the programmer(s) that created the bug. Interesting.
As for me, the worst bugs I’ve experienced (or should I say “created”) as a programmer have resulted in data deletion. However, in those cases I had a backup, thankfully.