I’m excited and yet depressed about being at the VSLive! conference in Orlando, FL. I like going to conferences. I enjoy the experience of the hotels, the routines and the knowledge sharing. But it’s also very depressing and frustrating because it revolves around Microsoft.
First, the following complaints should not be construed as a dig at Microsoft, but the folks in Redmond have to know how difficult it is to keep up with them. Enterprise IT departments are about as swift to embrace new technology as lawyers. If you’re wondering how slow lawyers are to adapt technology, the last place I worked developed software for law firms and many of our clients (about 75%) were moving straight from paper-based file folders to our case management system. This was in 2002.
In my particular case now, we are running code written in Borland Delphi 7 against old DBase tables that were originally created for use in Clipper DOS application! So we’re already about seven years behind on the code and oh, about twenty years behind on the database side.
We started a project to rearchitect the entire enterprise under .NET about a year and half ago. We purchased Visual Studio 2005 shortly after it came out and we have yet to implement any production code based on the .NET 2.0 framework. A few months ago, the .NET 3.0 framework came out. At this conference they’ve been demoing the new version of Visual Studio (code-named Orcas) with the 3.5 framework.
On top of that, we’ve got Microsoft CRM 3.0, BizTalk Server 2006 and SharePoint Portal Server (or MOSS) in the house now. All of that and we still have to maintain this legacy system, enhancing it for the incessant streams of new business.
So as I’ve been sitting through these sessions where the presenters are talking about all the cool stuff we can do—not right now I mind you, but before the end of the year or when Orcas is released—I’m struggling to digest it and how it all fits into my architecture and implementation plans.
Fortunately, I’ve got the ability to decide if we write against the 3.0 framework or write against the 3.5 framework using beta code from Microsoft. The latter sounds sketchy, I know, but you also begin to see real benefits, specifically in LINQ and Entity Framework, as well as all of the tool improvements for Presentation Foundation and Communication Foundation.
As if my water wasn’t muddy enough, it feels like I’m swimming in chocolate.
