During a recent job search, I couldn't help but notice the number of job descriptions with WCF in the skillset.  It was more than enough to get me thinking that perhaps its about time to start learning the remaining pieces of .NET 3.0 considering, you know, 4.0 has been in public beta for almost half a year. So I pulled out my notepad of "things I want to learn or learn better" and drew a star beside WCF.

Quite quickly, I found a woman named Michelle Lemieux Bustamante.  Michelle has been working on WCF far longer than almost anyone else.  She has written a book called Learning WCF that I have found quite helpful anytime I want to go further detail about a topic.  But by far, her most helpful resource has been a webcast series she recorded for Microsoft back in the summer of 2007 after two years of professional WCF development.  The webcast is 15 parts that are narrated by Michelle as she alternates between a slideshow and code examples, pausing to answer view questions every so often.  Much of the code in the tutorial is available for free download from her blog and from O'Reilly, including the original .NET 2.0 and an updated .NET 3.0 archive.  You can also download the slideshow Michelle uses in each video on the third page of the registration when you jump through Microsoft's hurdles to download the videos. The code used in the webcast series is very similar to the code used in Learning WCF and can be downloaded for free

I'm currently on the 12th video. I've been taking it slow, pausing and rewinding as necessary, and trying to complete her examples before she does in the video.  It's really helped me out a lot in my journey from zero to (approaching) hero in the WCF world.  There really is no excuse for not learning WCF with such a great resource available - for free.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  How did the job search go?  Quite well - I definitely made a step up in my career, and though I'm not using WCF for my new employer, I will definitely be ready should the need come down the road.