>>According to tweets I read from this week's PDC, it appears to be alive and well. VS is now using it extensively. Expression Blend was also written with it. Other expression products use a combination of WPF and native C++
>>
>> >Hello,
>>>
>>>Do you have any information about the future of WPF?
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>
>>>TFISHER
>
>So does anyone know what Microsoft's strategy is for software developers?
>
>I'm supposed to take their exam 70-515 "Web Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4" to keep up my Partner qualifications. The exam prep concentrates on telling you that everything you used in ASP.NET was wrong - now you're supposed to go completely client side with MVC and JSON and other drivel in order to make development far more difficult.
>
>Basically what that says to me is that Microsoft is abandoning ASP.NET while trying to act like it isn't.
>
>Now they are demoting silverlight (the wonder technology buzz of the last couple of years). I was just starting to build some apps in Silverlight (complete PITA but that was supposed to be the future).
>
>I'm real close to telling Microsoft to shove it, dropping our Certified Partner status, and heading for something more stable like Java or Perl or something.

I know what you're saying but my advice is don't make any hasty decisions. Radical changes of direction like open source may be for developers far younger than you and me. Microsoft and the CP program do bring advantages. C# and VB are not going away any time soon. .NET is not going away any time soon. Microsoft is annoying with the changes of strategic direction but we already knew that. We are in the same age range and the career decisions that make sense for us may not be the same ones an unmarried 20 something would make.

Me, I'm going for a bike ride, setting the recorder for college football and game 3 of the World Series, and turning the computer off for the rest of the day.