First of all, let me start saying that Microsoft folks have done great job with .NET 3.0 and 3.5. But that's not all.
WPF, Windows Forms?
So far, I like WPF. It definitely gives developers an edge over Windows Forms. However, Microsoft still lakes when it comes to 3D and complex Graphics. It seems like they are still using older technologies under the hood and hence performance is not that great.
Silverlight, ASP.NET 3.5, WCF?
They definitely have improved ASP.NET in version 3.5 by providing many new nice and useful controls. Long live ASP.NET ;).
Silverlight is a big mess. They try to provide same classes what WPF has but many of them are not going to work and it seems like with Silverlight 2.0, they still have a long way to go and running out of time. There is still not an easy way to use ADO.NET in Silverlight, which you would think they should have it any way because many of us have already spent enough time building our database layers.
WCF has some minor edge over previous Web services and .NET Remoting technologies.
LINQ, WF, and Others?
To me, I don’t see any big advantage of LINQ using for my database access. Why would I want to get all data on the client site and do queries there? It may be useful for large applications who needs to build their own entity engine but for most of us, I think it’s just a waste. Microsoft folks are trying to make things more complex then they should be.
I’ve not dealt much with WF yet. WF and WCF are my next goal in couple of months.
Your thoughts?