PDC05: Good sessions, great discussions, lots of swag, and extreme exhaustion...

Well, my plan to blog my way through PDC05 didnt work out as planned.  I have been so absorbed with the constant train of sessions, and followup discussions that I have been busy from 6:00am to midnight every single day.  I'll try to do a brain dump after I get back home, but for now, here are some quick impressions:

Killer new technology announcements:

  • Linq/DLinq/XLinq language extensions (C# 3.0 & VB 9.0) - this is a paradigm change - it will change fundamentally the way we think about do software development.  Don't let anyone make you think this is simply Microsofts Object Relational Mapper (ORM) tool.  Its much much more!
  • Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) - finally a standardized state-machine framework with full gui-driven design and 100% extensibility!!  Add MS Office 12 Server, InfoPath, and Sharepoint to the mix and you have a kick-ass foundation for huge productivity and rapid application development! 
  • Windows Presentation Foundation:(WPF) - XAML, and "Avalon" have been in the news for a while, but the Keynote showing the coupling with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) (formerly "Indigo") puts the entire architecture in perspective.  Then add on the Microsoft Essentials and you have a seriously compelling platform for the future!   Now we just have to wait for Windows Vista to launch in 2006.
  • IIS 7.0 - David and I have frequently talked about the need for a managed way to do ISAPI without the overhead of the ASP.NET core.  This is it!  Plus, it fully leverages the existing web.config and HttpModule approach originally definied within ASP.NET.  I look forward to seeing the perf, but overall am impressed with the direction.  I tossed some pointed questions about the future of ASP.NET Membership API's and possible integration with IIS 7.0, but the MS guys at the IIS booth were equal parts unclear and uncertain about any future integration. Keep tuned here...they invited me to attend a Redmond gathering in October about future IIS 7.0 architecture directions.
  • Windows Server 2003 R2 - I hesitated to include this, but v2.0 .NET Framework is shipping with it, which will be a huge key piece of the puzzle for adoption of all these new technologies .  The rest of the R2 features havent excited me yet, but they seem promising.

Hopefully I'll have time to delve into these topics further in the future. ...I'm exchausted, but thrilled at meeting the product teams, great peer developers in the community, and getting access to all the new beta and alpha bits.  Maybe in a month I will start to grok everything I have heard.....

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