Good Day to be a Programmer

So I'm looking at all the new stuff that was just released and the things that are going to be released soon. It's a good time to be a programmer in the Microsoft way as long as you are aligning yourself appropriately with the stars.

ASP.Net MVC
So we now have an actual complex pattern that you can read about from years gone by that has been implemented into a framework that we can use right now. Pretty darn cool and perhaps a step in the right direction.

Entity Framework
This is my personal holy grail. I know and love to write SQL but its time consuming and often boring and not exactly known very well by all programmers. I've interviewed some very senior developers over the last few years who don't know a foreign key constraint from a primary key. Using EF, if it performs, will allow us to truly design and work with data that is based on the business problem at hand, not the based on the current storage mechanism. Conversely, we will be able to design the data storage in the most efficient way possible. I watched an "expert-to-expert" video on Channel 9 over the weekend and found myself saying "Exactly! That's what I was trying to do!"

Linq and Lambda Expressions
Another set of tools in the toolbox. Remember that lambda expressions don't need Linq but Linq IS lambda expressions. If you learn Lambda you will have a good means of understanding Linq. This may also be a barrier to entry but I think its worth learning. Learn it now because if you run into a lambda in someone else's code and you can't ready it you'll be at a dead stop. Really.

WCF, WF, WPF, Silverlight, WSS, MOSS Etc.
There are just so many different variables out there right now with the latest technologies that will allow a good developer to design and implement a real solution quickly and have it work out of the gate. I'm really looking forward to understanding how all of these will coalesce into a united whole.

In the past, developers would spend a great deal of time trying to make things talk nice to each other. Plumbing and pattern identification. This problem is really going away quickly if you are in the MS paradigm.

So my job next year is going to look very different from my job last year. This is a good thing. It keeps me interested and forces me to excel in new areas. Keeps me from becoming a "crotchity old programmer". Seems like there is always more to learn but now the more is interesting and not necessarily a re-solving of an old problem. I can concentrate on the business instead of the plumbing. It also keeps Barnes & Noble and Amazon in business...

JJ