Over the past few years we’ve seen a proliferation of new technologies from Microsoft. We have WPF, WWF, WCS, WCF, Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC, The entity framework, LINQ, Expression Studio, TFS, DLR, DSL… The list already appears endless, and in another two years we can probably add another half dozen technologies based around Windows 7, the much-rumored Cloud OS and the next version of .NET. As a developer, it feels like we are on a perpetual treadmill of new technologies and fads. And whilst I’m sure that some of these techniques and technologies can make our lives easier, how the hell do I tell which ones?

Let’s take WWF as an example – at the moment I understand the underlying principles of what it’s for, but how do I choose whether to leverage it during my development process? I know it’s a workflow processing system. But is it going to scale? Is it going to deal with that really nasty requirement I know is waiting for me six months down the line? I know that it will take me a week or two to roll my own solution which is sufficient, but it might take at least that long this time round to learn about WWF and decide if its going to help me or if I should roll my own. All these questions and so few answers.

How do you choose which technologies to learn? Have you spent time exploring these new possibilities? Are you still using C++ and Active X? I would love to hear what it takes for you to invest in a new technology. For me, I try and track adoption rates of these technologies; once they hit a certain % my job requires I spend some time learning about them to see if there are any opportunities there. But how do you deal with this if you have the pressure of project deadlines?

If you’re looking for simple solutions to make your development process smoother, then there are hundreds of mini-features in .NET Reflector which do just that. While working with Lutz on the transfer of the tool, I spent a lot of time digging around in its technological guts finding them. Given that some of these bits of functionality gold can be a little tricky to find, we have an article on .NET Reflector this month to make your life just that little bit easier -  Reflector: Soup to Nuts is something like our very popular SQL Server Crib sheets, so let us know what you think!

If the feature you wish Reflector had is not in the core product, then there are over 30 add-ins available on codeplex.com. These add a huge amount of functionality to Reflector, from code analysis through to small tweaks to the UI. We also asked Richard Morris to sit down with the most prolific add-in author, Jonathan De Halleux, and discuss MbUnit, Reflector and working at Microsoft on Pex. We think he deserved to be Geek of the Week, but take a look at the interview and decide for yourself.

As always we love to hear from you, so if you have any feedback on Reflector or ideas for features you would love to see added or tweaked, please let us know!

Cheers,

James.