Looking back at 2009 I am quite happy that I got the chance to work with new technologies such as Silverlight 3, WPF, ASP.NET MVC and WCF. Even though it can be a bit stressful working as a developer with new stuff released every day it is still a pleasure when you realize that something new is actually very good and helps you build better applications. One thing that I have come to love in 2009 is the Entity Framework! That helps me build better DALs faster. Another thing that I really like is the ASP.NET MVC 2 that makes it easier to build great web applications.
One thing that disappointed me in 2009 was the .NET RIA Services that wasn’t all great under the hood. But I think that WCF RIA Services will solve most of the problems I had with the .NET RIA Services. 2010 will tell..
Another thing that disappointed me was Google Wave, I was “lucky” to get an invite almost straight away but I was a bit let down by the whole thing. The ideas behind it are quite good but since the hype was to big I was expecting a lot more out of it! Lets see what's happens in 2010..

Here are a few things I would like to do in 2010:

• Sharepoint 2010 and ArcGIS Server/MapIt: This will allow us to do some new cool stuff
• Scripting: It will be interesting to see what ESRI release at the developer summit but I need to get up to speed with all the scripting languages
• MapIt: I have done quite a bit of development with MapIt in 2009 and it will be interesting to see what ESRI will include in the upcoming versions in 2010. I still need to finish off the list with improvements ideas I promised to email ESRI..
• Silverlight 4: I hope that more companies will add Silverlight in to their IT plans so that I can deliver more powerful solutions to them. I have actually seen Silverlight in a few client sites already! More of that please!
• WPF: I hope that I don't have write another winform application, I want to do them all with WPF! ArcMap extensions rewrite to WPF?
• Expression Blend: I want to improve my skills in Expression Blend this year!
• ASP.NET MVC: I probably have a few classic asp applications that needs to be rewritten. This has to been done with MVC, cant wait!
• FGDB API? We have waited for ESRI to release the API for File Geodatabases for years.. Time now?
• Multitouch: I hope I can start looking in to the multitouching APIs in Windows 7 (and perhaps Surface?) this year.
• ArcGIS 9.4: I have already spent quite a bit of the time with the first beta version but I guess 2010 will be all about 9.4 which is good!

Happy new year everyone!