PDC & Office
This past week was a big week for Microsoft and developers world wide with the Professional Developers Conference (PDC). At the PDC, Microsoft unveiled numerous new technologies and gave us a glimpse of the future. This included Longhorn (next major release of windows), Yukon (code name for next major release of SQL Server), Whidbey (Next major release of Visual Studio.NET).
I wasn’t at this conference, but really didn’t need to be. What was amazing this year was the web blog coverage of this event. Every day I probably spent an hour or so reading what various attendees saw, what they liked, disliked and the occasional idol worship (many were bowing down to Don Box, who seems like a humble guy). This was a great way to be at the conference without being at the conference. Of note is pdcbloggers.net. This site aggregated PDC attendee blogs. If you want to catch up with all the PDC buzz, hit this site and read what your fellow developers had to say about the conference.
On another note, I heard from many friends that the interest in Office 2003 and its future as a programmability platform is overwhelming. Attendees could not seem to get enough of:
The thing that really excites me is that the PDC tends to be hard core and forward thinking developers, engineers and architects. When you can excite this crowd you know that there is something to this release of Office and its future.