As I get settled in at this new job, I begin to take stock of what the company wants to accomplish: a solid, extensible product with the longest possible useful life. Given the fact that this product will probably take 2-3 years (total) to develop, that means learning the newest stuff and looking at some technologies that have yet to be released. The new technologies coming out of Microsoft in the next six to twelve months is staggering. Beyond products (like Windows 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008), there are also lots of open-source projects being developed by Microsoft (Yes I used 'open-source' and 'Microsoft' in the same sentence in a complimentory way). There are also several ideas that, while they're not new, they are subtlely changing the way we should code.
I've been looking at:
... and the list goes on.
It is quite overwhelming. I'll find myself reading the same blog entry ten times to try and understand something, only to find out that in order to really understand it, you have to understand some underlying principal on which it is built.
On the plus side, I am learning all kinds of new stuff every day, and that makes my job one of the best in the world!
~L