All the questions you have asked are hard to answer without business requirements. My personal opinion is use whatever technology you understand best and is best for the job. The important gotcha with this is you also need to spend time learning new technology all the time (but really? is that not required anyway?). Also, the biggest suggestion of technology and pattern practice I can give anyone is Inversion of Control or Dependency Injection. It is absolutely amazing what you can do with it and it is really simple to implement. It also promotes decoupling and good design/seperation of classes. Makes the lives of Dev and Test a million times easier hands down. The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec² - Marcus Dolengo