I have spent the past few years working almost exclusively in WPF with a little bit of Silverlight thrown in for good measure. While I have worked on some web projects over the years (mostly 99-08), I spent much of the 90s working on VB applications (versions 2 – 6), so I’ve always considered myself a client / desktop developer.

WPF was a natural step for me, but I do remember having to get over the learning curve. I definitely recall a few “aha!” moments, but never found it all that difficult. When I was in Redmond earlier this year for the MVP Summit, I recall talking to some folks from Microsoft that told me how tough they thought WPF was. This surprised me because I never thought it was *that* tough, and honestly, the people saying it to me are freakin’ SMART, so how could something that came relatively easy to me be tough for them?

So, as I prepare for an upcoming talk, I’m interested in your experiences learning (or trying to learn) WPF. If you have learned, tried to learn, or are currently learning WPF, please take a few minutes to share your experiences in the comments section.

Specifically, what I’m looking for are answers to these questions:

What was your initial impression?
Was it easy? Was it difficult?
What did you find most difficult to learn?
Did you give up? If so, why?
What was your prior experience? What technologies? Was it with desktop applications or exclusively web?
What resources did you use to get past the issues / problems you ran into?
What advice would you give to someone learning WPF? (Question added on 12/17/2010 @ 10:10am)

As added incentive, on December 29, 2010 at noon (eastern time) , I’ll randomly select someone that shared their experiences. That person will get a cool prize from DevExpress!  If for some reason that person doesn’t want the prize, I’ll select someone else. I’ll announce the selection both on this blog and on twitter.