Very quick laundry list of things worth playing with from Microsoft:


F Sharp
Managed Extensions Framework
IronPython/IronRuby
ChartControls
Silverlight 2 and Control Pack
ASP.NET MVC
PowerShell 2

This list is incomplete.

Thanks to everyone who came to my talk in Brighton last night. The books I used to learn about the internals of the CLR are:
Expert .NET 1.1 Programming by Simon Robinson
Maximizing .NET Performance by Nick Wienholt

Unfortunately Both refer to .NET 1.1. There's also:

CLR Via C#: Applied .NET Framework 2.0 Programming by Jeffrey Richter

Which good but doesn't focus on performance.

Blogwise try:

Rico Mariani's Performance Tidbits
blogs.msdn.com/ricom/

Registration for Developer Day 7 is now open. This is an excellent free day of .NET training organised by the UK .NET developer community. It's being held on Sat 22nd Nov at Microsoft's offices in Reading. There won't be any Microsoft speakers at the event so no marketing. Last year it filled up within 24 hours. Free lunch included.

I'm giving several talks in November, including An Introduction to Windows Workflow @ VBUG Winter Conference on Tue 4th Nov. This is a paid-for 2 day conference at Microsoft's offices in Reading.

The excellent Developer Day returns in it's 7th incarnation, also held at Microsoft's offices in Reading, on Sat 22nd November. This is a free event which unfortunately means tickets go very quickly. Keep an eye on the website to book yours.

I'll be giving a new talk, Make the Most of Your Cores - Parallel Extensions for .NET. It's just been announced that this will be ...