Must know technologies

Following are the technologies I believe are the future and want to learn but not finding the time for:

• Workflow Foundation: The reviews of this are really really good and people are saying, nothing can beat the designer for this.
• Windows Communication Foundation: Microsoft has unified the way two processes communicate, be they on the same box or on a remote client/server. We don't have to decide between .NET Remoting, Web Services, Message Queues, Distributed Transactions and a few other related technologies anymore. The basics of WCF are that you create a service and add endpoints to it. If you want a remote .NET client to communicate with it, you add a TCP endpoint (which is equal to .NET Remoting). If you want a Java client to communicate with it, you add HTTP endpoint (which is equal to Web Services). Note that the service remains the same, you only need to keep adding endpoints which reduces code duplication / complexity.
• .NET Framework 3.5: This has a lower priority as it is not out yet but the additions that Microsoft is making to the framework are pretty interesting. The biggest proof that it is interesting is the fact that Sun is taking a few pages from .NET 3.5 for the next version of it's framework . (Note: Microsoft itself is taking a lot of ideas from open source projects like Hibernate)
• Windows Presentation Foundation: This has the lowest priority on my list but I find it the most interesting. Future windows applications are going to be built on top of this technology. GDI+/WinForms are past it's maturity and WPF is taking it's place. However people are not just going to run and make WPF apps. I see over the next two years a lot of small companies coming out with WPF followed by the big boys.

Update: I had Java on my list but scratched it off after a lot of reading over the past few days. The reason being that there are so many different directions you can take within Java that getting my head around it is in itself a big challenge. Hence I have decided to teach myself more of the .NET stuff instead of trying to be on two ships at the same time.

4 Responses

Wow, it's all .Net technologies

How come I don't feel surprised?

.Net and Java go different ways.  Java is like the ivory schools on East like Harvard and Yale, looking for elegancy and structure.  It has so many rules to restrict itself that it makes people feel it's bulky and not practical.

While .Net is like the schools on West coast, just name some: Stanford, Berkley, and etc.  It is creative, hungy for solution, and full of freedom.  Yet, it lacks orders and structures.

Once a while, we will go back for the elegance after eating too much fast food . 

Put another way, Java is one step closer to science, while .Net is one step closer to engineering.  Science looks for rationality, while engineering looks for soultion.  Neither is wrong.  But they do run into conflicts sometime (for many times I am mad at those stubbon engineers, they are really from Mars. ).

- Lilly   February 22, 2007 08:29 PM

Re: Must know technologies (my goal)

I think you need to start blogging about Java technologies while I blog about .NET. Now that would be awesome as everyone (at least we both) will know everything and the world will be a better place

- Vaibhav Kamath   February 22, 2007 09:57 PM

You do not know what you are asking for

hehe.

Do you know how many times I fight with those engineers in our company?  If you know it, you would not ask me to start a Java cloumn.

But yeah, from time to time if Ifind some good topics on Java (or something else like design, architecture, software engineering/management, etc), I'd be happy to blog on it. 

- Lilly   February 23, 2007 07:15 AM

It's been 4 months...

Now I know .Net is hard to learn.  I bet stick with Java, hehe.

Look forward to your new post.

- Lilly   June 29, 2007 07:15 AM