Microsoft .NET Roadmap Briefing

This morning I was at Microsoft Singapore, attending the .NET Roadmap briefing which I signed up one week ago. This was the second time I'd been to the Microsoft building, the bay view from 22nd floor is always fascinating.

Generally speaking, it was a very effective session with nice freebies and excellent speakers in a freaking freezing conference room. Well, the free lunch was not bad, too.



Though the conference room was abit small, but the roadmap for .NET from 2.0 to even 3.0 is huge. There were four speaker covered most of the essential topics in .NET 2.0, including architecture, VB 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0.

Most of the attendees were .NET developers, few of them were project managers. Jay Schmelzer from Microsoft VB team gave us a very impressive presentation and hands-on demo on VB 2005. Well, the .NET 2005 IDE is doing most of the tedious job for us, and the the most exciting part is the guessing of the fields for data binding, smarty default values were really stunning.

Maybe in a soon-to-be future, people do not require in depth knowledge about programming/networking/design patterns and so on to be an Application Developer. Well, the evolutionary .NET platform can easily turn everyone into an Application Builder. Anyone know how to operate a Windows-based computer can simply use drag-and-drop to assemble modules they need, such as database connection module, login module, reporting module etc, to build their desired applications. It is amazing right? But does this mean that, as .NET Application Developer, I am going to lose my job soon?

Another thing noted was the mentioning of Web2.0 and SOA in the session. Speakers from Microsoft brought up the attension by comparing the differences of these two conceptes. Sevice Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the approach for Enterprice Architecture. The aim is to deliver the service efficiently, accurately and precisely, it requries centralized control. Web2.0 is decentralized content and services need for further dicovery, refactoring and delivery. In my opinion, both Web2.0 and SOA are demand driven.

I was always wondering what makes Microsoft different from the rest of software companies in the market. Why Windows could take the dominancy in desktop PC OS market? Why Netscape was over taken by IE? Why WorkPerfect had no match to Microsoft Office? And do not forget the XBox invation to game console field, and Google is facing increasing pressure from Microsoft too. I believe all these things happened for a reason, as much as a software company can go along the technological way, marketing strategy still rules. Regardless how edging you technology can be, from a enterprice point fo view, each bite on the market share that counts.











Here are the list of the items in the goodie bag:

- O'Reilly "Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart" by Wei-Meng Lee.
- 90-Day Trail version of Visual Studio 2005 Pro
- Developer Security Resource Kit for VS 2005
- Accelerator Kit for VS 2005
- VS Team System White Paper