My thoughts on TechEd 2014 announcements

Are you following this? Are you watching the videos? I think Channel9, the official Microsoft media outlet, died from overwhelming demand. The cynics may say that this is because of technical issues, however, I say that this is due to a highly demanding audience :). If you have been unable to watch the live stream, rest assured that all recordings will be available online soon (usually withing 48hrs).

It's only been a month since the //Build event where Microsoft announced a host of new features, open sourced their new Roslyn compiler, and brought the mobile, desktop and gaming platforms together under one roof with the announcement of Universal applications. I don't know about you but I'm still trying to watch the videos from Build and I'm currently down to 42 of 52 in my list. At this pace, I will be done in a few months... #sadbunny.

Over the last couple of days, and only a month after the //Build event, Microsoft came back with a vengeance. People say that Microsoft avoids major announcements during TechEd events and most sessions tend to focus on deep dives for specific features or revolve around training. However, the last couple of TechEds have been really big in terms of announcements. Back in November we had Visual Studio Online, the Monaco code editor and new Azure features all around. This time, MS went one further announcing a core changes in the .NET framework.

My head is still spinning and I think that I am dreaming. No more web.config, no more dlls, no more deployment zips with a bunch of dll dependencies, no more /bin directory (sort of) and a pick and choose your .NET version!

This is madness

On top of the development announcements, a whole host of new Azure features and a new SDK to simplify interaction with the cloud were also announced. With so many interesting changes it feels like it will take me a year to review and evaluate the new features!

Don't panic, don't panic. OK, you can panic. Microsoft is actually planning to use a 4 month release cycle for new .NET features for the server and the web meaning there could be new stuff to learn every 4 months!!

Funny tweet I saw today:

It seems that I'm not alone in my struggle! Even the professionals are suffering. It does feel that it's hard to keep up with the changes and the way technology is evolving, but at the same time that's what makes our field exciting. I promised myself to cut down on my TV in order to find time to catch up.

In conclusion, Microsoft is doing an excellent job and I'm really impressed by the changes. Things are shifting, albeit quicker than I would have hoped, however, I feel so blessed to be a developer during this exciting timeand I cannot wait to start using the new tools, features and frameworks to improve both my development process and offer competitive products and solutions to my users/clients.

Happy coding...