IMPORTANT: Web Part Development Roadmap
A lot of people are wondering if they still should invest in web part development. ASP.NET 2.0 is comming and will have something called "web parts" as well. Will they fit in the current version of SharePoint? Will the "old" web parts fit in the new version? Finally there are some answers, Mike Fitzmaurice has written a good post about what you should take into account when you will be developing web parts. A must-read if you're into web part development!