Programming Windows: The Windows 7 Developer Story (Premium)
After the first public demonstration of Windows 7 at PDC 2008, Steven Sinofsky ceded the stage to Scott Guthrie for a tour of new developer features. Guthrie, as always, arrived with an in-depth understanding of the content he was presenting. But after the revolution that developers had received with Windows Vista, the Windows 7 developer story was decidedly minor.
On the one hand, this wasn’t surprising: since releasing the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, formerly Avalon), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, formerly Indigo), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) alongside the .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly WinFX) alongside Windows Vista in 2006, Microsoft had understandably shipped only minor updates to each. For example, .NET Framework 3.5 shipped in November 2007, providing integrated support for Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), a new way to access backend data sources using .NET languages like C# and Visual Basic rather than forcing the developer to learn Transact SQL or whatever interface was native to the data source.