I was wondering your opinions on the current and future state of developing for the desktop. I had hoped a clear successor to WinForms for developing LOB applications would have started to emerge by now... in my opinion it has not. WPF had some steam, and then Silverlight...then the announcement about HTML5 and CSS being the preferred development platform for Windows 8. Now they did backpeddle at the BUILD event and made it clear that HTML5/CSS was for Metro apps, not LOB.

I have done some very limited stuff in WPF and XAML, BIG learning curve that make me nervous to invest the time in.

WinForms still seems the most productive.

I cannot see the answer being browser driven, not yet at least for hardcore data-centric business apps.

But again does anyone see a path forming for the desktop?

If you had to start a new LOB project right now, heavy on data and functionality, what would you use to develop it?

On a side note has anyone else tried the Windows 8 developer release? Boy I hope that changes A LOT before RTM. It seems like Microsoft is a little lost right now and trying to play catch up with competitors like Apple and Google and tailoring to the masses that wants "apps" and widgets, not "real" business applications.

Keith Chisarik