One of my favorite video games is Jak and Dexter: The Precursor Legacy. 

This post serves as a precursor of my thoughts on DevTeach before it begins, based on the .NET session schedule.

Last year I gained a lot of information about application architecture and windows forms application deployment.   Now a year past, my app architecture has evolved dramatically but I am yet to deploy a single windows forms app.  As much as I rail against web apps, I continue to be well paid to write the damn things and there's been no cry for a windows application.  (I have to build it so they will come, but have been too busy enhancing existing web apps.)

Back to DevTeach 2004, after looking at the .NET schedule I see a lot of repeat sessions from last year about Windows Forms deployment and application architecture and fewer sessions about XML.  A number of Whidbey-type sessions have surfaced, but there are also new sessions about MSMQ, Web Services, and messaging.  These are the sessions that pique my interest this year.

So as a DevTeach Precursor Legacy, I'll probably be fired-up about Windows Forms--again--and be thinking more about messaging. 

Messaging?  What the hell is messaging???

Postcursor

Now that the conference is over, I'll have to say that Cool Carl Franklin put me over the top with No-Touch Smart Client Deployment and I now have no excuses left, Tom Eberhard made me want to scrap all of my apps and rewrite them (but I did that last year and went overboard on the 3-tier thing), Kevin McNeish gave me a headache, just like last year, Ted Neward proved he IS the smartest guy in the industry, and if I was half as smart as Ted I could answer the question “What the hell is messaging???” but can't. 

I saw SQL Reporting Services in action and know that I will make the time for it, and soon.  I finally get Wiki, thanks to Rod Paddock, and I think, maybe, the biggest impact DevTeach 2004 had on me is that I am, without reservation, self-restraint or self-respect, a DotNetNuke Wannabee!  That nut Jim Duffy converted me.  He's the Main DotNet Nukester, after all.