Another version of Visual Studio is here and while there are many cool features, we can conclude a lot from the fact that it isn't a staggering release. The first Visual Studio that wore the .NET moniker was a paradigm shift and threw in many features such as Web services, which though immature was definitely a killer feature. Now we have interesting upgrades and improvements. I won't say that Visual Studio has jumped the shark because I do think it is on track and still relevant, but this is a sign that the platform has matured. Most of the cool technology is manipulatable in Visual Studio 2008, but isn't baked in as most of it was released earlier.

Things such as WCF and WPF and the new source code release that Visual Studio 2008 is wired to let you step through are things and technologies outside of Visual Studio 2008 that it makes far easier to use. Another sign of maturity is the fact that there are features such as the ability to target multiple versions of the .NET Framework that speak to compatibility with the past and a vision for the long haul.

Where will it go next? Well, that's hard to say, but given that there are already Silverlight tools available as an add-in, I would say that this will be a big direction in the future. Will we have to wait for the next major release? That depends on Silverlight's acceptance and evolution, but the tools will get a lot of attention and upgrades before I find myself writing about the next major version of Visual Studio.