This isn’t even new news, but it is somewhat new to me! I met Damien at an SDR back in October and had fun sitting with him before I headed to the airport as he advised me that I should probably just get off the fence and move to C# finally. The discussion was mostly around the fact that I won’t code on the fly in C# when I do presentations because it’s not my natural coding language and I know I”ll do something wrong like use parens in an array and not be able to see why the thing won’t compile. He suggested if I was always coding in C# instead of mostly in VB and sometimes in C#, this wouldn’t be a problem.

I think it was the first time I heard someone make this argument in an attempt to truly be helpful and serious, not desecrating VB or laughing as they talked; therefore it left me with a great impression of him.

So I was very happy to hear that he took at  job with Microsoft recently and is working on the LINQ to SQL team. He’s a really bright young guy. They actually snagged a few of these guys from the SDR. Jonathan Carter was there and became a new hire shortly after.

But to me what is most significant about this is knowing that the LINQ to SQL team is hiring developers. That says to me that they are continuing to work on LINQ to SQL. I get asked about this a lot when I present. I see  questions in listservs and on blogs – if LINQ to SQL is done and Microsoft is going to make everyone who has fallen in love with LINQ to SQL use Entity Framework instead – even if they don’t want to. Even Roger Jennings  questioned this in a deeply analytical blog post. (I’m starting to wonder if Roger moonlights as a trial lawyer. ;-))

I have even seen suggestions that LINQ to SQL was intentionally cobbled and done so for political, not technical reasons. I dunno, maybe I’m just too naive; but I find that hard to believe. OTOH, I have worked for myself for nearly 20 years, so I am a little out of touch (and very happily, at that!) when it comes to corporate politics.

But I really don’t believe that this is going to happen. I do believe that LINQ to SQL will evolve and, like datasets, remain a completely viable choice for data access in .NET. I can’t say why it didn’t get a lot of attention for SP1, but comparing it to the fact that Entity Framework has been developed out of band and therefore introduced a lot of new stuff between Beta3 and the RTM version that will be part of SP1 is comparing apples to oranges.

So knowing that they are getting fresh blood (and I don’t mean warm bodies) in the form of developers on the LINQ to SQL team is, to me, an indication that the product will continue to evolve.

And of course, thanks to my memory of that conversation last fall, I have already suggested to Danny Simmons that he task Damien with writing some VB samples! Hee hee.

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