WPF/WCF with C#

[gb1983]

Hi,

I am currently and have been for approx 5 years - a VB6 developer. I write software which is windows forms based, and distributed also.

I have been learning c# for about 3 months. I have a quite a good grasp of the language now.

My question is: Are WPF and WCF the best technologies to now learn in todays market? I have started to learn them over the last couple of weeks. Are there any other techonolgies that have been released lately for example that may be a better option to study, or are WPF and WCF likely to be to main development platform for the forseeable future? I've heard of Silverlight, and not sure if this is worth learning instead.

Thanks for any advice.

[chris128]

Silverlight is basically just a sub section of WPF that runs in a web browser using the Silverlight runtime rather than the full .NET framework. So if you learn WPF then you already know the main parts of Silverlight, you just have to learn the limitations that you have in Silverlight that you do not have in a normal desktop WPF app.

Anyway as for the question, I would say WPF and WCF are good technologies to learn now (they are the 2 things I am focusing on at the moment) as WPF is the only desktop app development technology that Microsoft are developing any further (as of .NET 4.0 there will be no additions to winforms) and WCF is a good way of communicating between applications/services.

One other thing you might want to look at is WF (Workflow Foundation) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa663328.aspx