So being one of the few people from Philadelphia to choose Mix07 over TechEd, I was asked by Schwammy what he should focus on at TechEd. There are a lot of cool things coming down the pipe right now. It's a really exciting time to be a developer. However, if it comes down to choosing a session of X vs Y, focus on:
- Silverlight 1.1 - Note, 1.1 has .net integration, 1.0 does not. 1.0 is cool, and would be a worth Flash competitor. 1.1 is totally revolutionary. It's not a Flash competitor. It's an HTML/CSS killer. Once this reaches fruition, you won't recognize the web anymore. Plan accordingly. If you get a chance to hear from Nikhil Kothari, or Scott Guthrie, be sure you cancel anything else you had going on. Scott obviously is the man when it comes to ASP.Net. Nikhil is so far ahead of the game, that he has to write his own tools to support his efforts.
- Astoria - This product hasn't gotten the coverage it deserves. This project basically brings the power of Linq to your web services. It's tied heavily to the Entity Framework (which has been delayed til some time in '08). Nevertheless, this is going to be a huge game changer in it's own right, as it will further the concept of the programmable web. If you get a chance to attend a talk by Pablo Castro, drop just about anything else. This guy delivers a very animated, exciting, informative presentation. Probably the best pure presenter at all of MIX07. The guy clearly enjoys his work.
- WCF - Communication Foundation is set to take a front row seat, as it is foundational for the products above. My predicition is that this technology is going to be central to many of Microsoft's innovations going forward. I just picked up this book:
- Jasper - Honestly, I missed it if there was something at MIX07 on this, but I wish there had been. As it was, I only barely caught the Astoria presentation. This project is really more of VB.Net IronPython thing. Apparently, it leverages some new dyncmic languages stuff. Obviously, I'm weak in the area. Hopefully I won't be for long.
So hopefully that helps. I'll be blogging about some of the strengths and weaknesses I've noticed in these upcoming tools, and how you can start architecting for them immediately.