The year ahead, 2010.
This blog has been very quiet the last few months, in fact this year I've for the first time (since I started blogging some 8 years ago) missed months, I guess as time goes by you get less and less time :) As my last post of the year however I wanted to restore a tradition and look back on this year and gaze into my crystal ball for next year.
This year Microsoft has pushed foward the next phase of it's developer toolset, key amongst them has been MVC 2, C#\VB, Silverlight 4, TS2010, VS2010 and the .NET framework v4.0. While key milestone products I think by the end of 2010 several will have reached sp or interim release (not to mention talk will have started of TFS\VS 2011\12). I do think that VS\TFS2010 by RTM will have solved a great many perf problem, I do see it however only as a foundation with greater things to come.
Microsoft has been quietly getting in new talent, key hires have included the likes of Louis DeJardin (Spark view engine creator) and Jon Galloway while this year has also been bad for the loss of staff I do think that next year Microsoft will be hiring wide again.
On the OSS front this year the Codeplex foundation started life and by the end of the year already includes several ex Microsoft projects, I do think that next year several other projects will join them (and one of them will be something big, NHib, Rhino say). Next year I'd also expect to see NUnit 3.0 and MbUnit 3.4/5 come to life, I also think BDD will gain more and more traction in 2010 in the .NET community.
On a personal level I have new goals and ambitions for next year, see you there.