Recently Microsoft (via Scottgu) has announced some new technologies (WebMatrix, ASP.NET Razor, IIS Developer Express, SQL Server Compact Edition). I think this is something new direction in which Microsoft is trying to move since launching of ASP.NET MVC. I think the clear target of these new moves are Ruby/Python/PHP/.. developers or current ASP.NET developers who are thinking to move to Ruby/Python/PHP. What's your opinion?
Will Microsoft be successful in its objective?
The objective is clearly to lower to bar of entry for new developers. Getting a .Net-based website has never been easier and by adding the PHP support they can tempt PHP developers by offering a familiar face in a new environment.
I think this will unleash a new wave of developers discovering .Net web development.
Seems to me that its substantially aimed at people who are not particularly programmers - web development for SuperUser.com perhaps? (c.f. the link to Scott Hanselman's blog in my comment to the question) And who don't necessarily want to be "developers" but do want to have some capabilities to go beyond plain HTML.
Its also aimed at demonstrating that there is a complete stack and further that you can deploy applications using that stack to shared hosting without incurring additional costs (which is a new feature enabled by the new release of SQL Server Compact Edition)
Last its an entry point for those who might want to be developers - if you're talking about "developing" a website or a web application its not always the case that the programming involved is complicated
Without playing - I need to set up a VM so I can play in a sandbox - its hard to go further but WebMatrix is composed of a number of very capable tools and therefore offers considerable potential to develop apps beyond what is possible "out of the box".
I disagree that WebMatrix is only useful for not-particularly-programmers or novice developers. It is (especially that Razor thing) incredibly useful for developing "one-liner" websites of non-production quality (e. g. to demonstrate some feature or just to provide a test web service for programmer's needs).
I hadn't used WebMatrix enough yet, but it already seems that I can create 50% of a simple web calculator before VS2010 even starts up :-)
Their goal: Simplify and court new developers.
Will they be succesfull: This seems to me one of the easiest ways to get out a website so I don't see how this can fail.