Many Upcoming Changes Ahead
There are a lot of changes that are soon coming to those who are uses to the Microsoft .NET platform. For instance:
- Visual Studio Orcas is in beta, and I saw something stating that it would be complete Q4 of 2007. It features support for most of the features below, as well as new ways to design applications (such as including split view, splitting the design/HTML views into two panes).
- .NET Framework 3.0 is out, utilizing 2.0 with some enhancements related to Vista, WPF, etc.
- WPF (and silverlight or WPF/e) is a completely new way to design interactive applications. It brings together many technologies, and includes video, audio, and dynamically layed-out text (which all works similar to Flash), to create more interactive windows applications. There is a way to get it to work in the browser as well.
- WCF brings together many communications technologies so that you only have to write one set of code to interact with allof them.
- Windows WF (not WWF, so they don't get sued by World Wildlife Foundation) is a workflow based technology. It's not a workflow engine, but provides means for applications to create workflow capabilities through the API it exposes.
- LINQ is a new way to query a database, XML, or any IEnumerable collection. It looks like SQL, but SQL users will easily spot the new query syntax, something completely different than it is now.
- EL 3 was released in April 2007, which contains Validation and Policy Injection application blocks, in addition to the newly improved existing list of blocks.
- SDK's have been on the rise, as I downloaded the Windows SDK and the Windows Mobile SDK containing a lot of resources
- XNA is a gaming technology using C# express tool to create an environment where independent developers can create games on the windows and XBOX 360 platforms.
- Expression tools include some of the new capabilities to design applications, including capabilities to build interactive features using WPF.
I'm sure I missed something. From all of this, I have to say the technology is definitely cool. There is a lot of technology that a developer take advantage of. WPF is really amazing in all that it can do, but it's completely different as its an XML-based technology for the interface (mapping to a code-behind that is the same as it is now).
I really like being a .NET developer, as Microsoft is always building great technology. However, is anyone else frustrated with the rate of change that is going on? I mean, 2.0 was barely released and there was talk about 3.0. Not all the bugs are out of 2.0 yet! There are many free downloads out there with added capabilities, which while cool that it's free and you can take advantage of, exponentially increases the learning curve.
While I look forward to what's coming, I do not look forward to studying it. I also do not look forward to a new VS editor, as it seems costly to upgrade everytime a new .NET framework comes out. I know of plenty of companies still in 1.1 because of that cost to do so, and if you are thinking about it, you may want to consider going directly to 3.0 when Visual Studio 2007 (is that the final name?) comes out.
At any rate, this is a glimpse of some of the upcoming technologies, that you may find useful.