15.21. Summary

There are some fantastic new features in WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 3.0. And the release of Silverlight 4.0 is just around the corner. If you are beginning a new project, should you create it using Silverlight or WPF?

Pete Brown (the developer community program manager for the Windows client) has the following to say on his blog:

"In the future, it is very likely that both Silverlight and WPF will be a single technology with a single codebase. After all, Silverlight was originally known as WPF/E (E as in Everywhere), and in an amazing 180 degree reversal of our usual approach, we took an ugly codename and created a great product name (Silverlight) from it."

http://community.irritatedvowel.com/blogs/pete_browns_blog/archive/2009/12/01/The-Future-of-Client-App-Dev-_3A00_-WPF-and-Silverlight-Convergence.aspx

Whatever happens (and it's likely this merge won't happen overnight), it is clear that WPF and Silverlight have a very bright future ahead and are certainly technologies to invest in.