How Windows Everywhere finally happened • Hacker News Board

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#51

Post by riffraff » Mon, May 23, 2016, 8:01 AM UTC

statictype wrote: post #22

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

I think developers prefer a crappy but stable technologies with a proven market over uncertain and fast-moving technologies. Businesses - yes. Developers - my experience says no (myself included).

I think developers like uncertain and fast technology IFF they get to choose.

New web framework comes out? Cool I'll try it.

Web framework version I am using is suddenly EOL'd and I have to upgrade to something radically different? Curse upstream!

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#52

Post by beobab » Mon, May 23, 2016, 8:02 AM UTC

statictype wrote: post #22

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

I think developers prefer a crappy but stable technologies with a proven market over uncertain and fast-moving technologies. Businesses - yes. Developers - my experience says no (myself included).

As a developer, I prefer technologies which don't plunge me into the "abyss of uselessness", where I know enough to know that something should be possible, and how it's done in the "old way" but have no idea how to do it in the "new way".

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#53

Post by realusername » Mon, May 23, 2016, 8:13 AM UTC

bigger_cheese wrote: post #29

blackoil wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment has some merit, if we ignore the fact that now same kernel is running across devices, with same subsystems and same applications, with possibility to write one application that works on all. While it is difficult to write UI to scale across screen size and input types, it is possible to build responsive UIs and people are doing so.

>"with possibility to write one application that works on all" I'm not sure this is such a good thing. Maybe I'm in the minority but my phone and my desktop OS have vastly different use cases and I'd expect apps running on each of them to be different. I'm not interested in a converging UI. I want a user experience tailored to the platform I'm running the app on. I'd rather a solid desktop experience then having to p…

As a good example of this problem, I remember the new Metro (or whatever it's called now) calculator taking a whole screen on a 22". Yes it worked, but it looked really terrible and unusable.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#54

Post by pavlov » Mon, May 23, 2016, 8:18 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #44

dragontamer wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure this is such a good thing. Maybe I'm in the minority but my phone and my desktop OS have vastly different use cases and I'd expect apps running on each of them to be different. But why should they be programmed different? You can create XAML forms that are optimized for each platform. But why would you want to rewrite your code to adapt to the different GUIs? Won't it just be easier, as a developer, to…

Your assumptions hold for OS X and iOS even though they are not the same OS and never claimed to be. > Won't it just be easier, as a developer, to create a singular platform with two XAML (one for small screens, one for large screens) that share the same codebase? In theory yes, in practice changing the UI isn't the only problem. The problem is that a phone is much more limited, both in hardware and in what it is all…

For a lot of people, "desktop" really means laptop these days.

Laptops are much closer to mobile than the traditional desktop PC you describe. Limited storage and battery life are important considerations on a MacBook just as on an iPad.

Also the Mac desktop software environment is more like iOS these days, if you want to go through the Apple-sanctioned route of using the Mac App Store. For example direct folder access is not possible, so the Mac desktop app in your example would have to use the Dropbox API too.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#55

Post by tehrei » Mon, May 23, 2016, 8:37 AM UTC

piyush_soni wrote: post #39

userbinator wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long-time Win32 programmer (over a decade), I can safely say that the vast majority of existing applications still remain (for the time being) forward-compatible. Here's some examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOj-bAZBhnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRfn4M5DXTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqFWuNmWbHk The reasons people hold off on "upgrading" Windows versions is not mainly because of compatibility…

That's great! I didn't know about it. Would anyone happen to know how does it compare with the applications on Linux? Are they similarly forward compatible?

To expand on copperx, they might be. Since you can have several versions of a lib installed and the kerneluserspace interface is stable, if you can get the old versions you need for your distro, then you can run the application. At worst, you might need to compile from source (which I do realise can take a lot of time and effort).

So the kind-of proper answer to that question is, "if you want to run a popular old application on a popular current distro, there is probably a repository you can pull packages from that will allow you to do it, otherwise it's somewhat of a crapshoot".

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#56

Post by B1FF_PSUVM » Mon, May 23, 2016, 8:46 AM UTC

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

> Windows Phone, brilliant as it is, did never reach mass adoption

Being kicked in the nuts by the 'cloud' division does not help either.

Because it was the free 15 GB storage from all those phone buyers that was dragging them down.

"Adult supervision, can I haz it?"

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#57

Post by joosters » Mon, May 23, 2016, 9:10 AM UTC

feelin_googley wrote: post #24

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3070460/windows-pcs/mic...

I despise Microsoft for this. Two days ago, my dad accidentally triggered an upgrade to Windows 10. In a panic, he switched the computer off, and now it no longer boots.

It's now down to me to repair the computer. Apparently, months of dismissing the pop up invitations to upgrade to Windows 10 were not enough for Microsoft, they had to go and practically force it down people's throats. And my family is paying the price.

Microsoft, you are utter scum. You have wasted my time, my dad's time, and cost him hours of lost work.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#58

Post by mafuyu » Mon, May 23, 2016, 9:16 AM UTC

dingo_bat wrote: post #27

I don't like the Universal apps or whatever they're calling them this month. They are limited, slow, crashy and buggy. They regularly just disappear after a sleep and wake. I have been left questioning my sanity wondering if I closed Messenger. Also, they are clunky and slow. For example, switch to a desktop with a universal app open and for the duration of the desktop slide animation, the app window will be complete…

As a side note, I fixed the Start menu searching issue by disabling the slide animation for the menu: http://lifehacker.com/disable-this-animation-to-make-windows...

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#59

Post by taneq » Mon, May 23, 2016, 9:28 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #46

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

> Microsoft really needs to stop introducing "upgrades" that require application rewrites in Windows for the next 3-5 years, and focus on getting the Windows Store going. You mean like the "Framework of the day" on web land? Or the "rewrite your app with each Android version" that you cannot get? Or "your language just got replaced" on iOS land?

It wasn't always like this. The Windows API was fairly stable from the mid-late 90s for at least a decade. They decided to start breaking that compatibility in the name of 'progress' at around the time they started trying to squidge together their touchscreen and desktop interfaces, but this API stability used to be one of the huge drawcards of the Windows platform.

Re: How Windows Everywhere finally happened

#60

Post by taneq » Mon, May 23, 2016, 9:30 AM UTC

statictype wrote: post #22

Maarten88 wrote: post #9

Operation successful, patient dead... It's kind of tragic that much of this effort may never pay off: in the process of merging platforms and restructuring API's (that started with Vista and is still going) Microsoft lost the connection to many of its developers, who went to build Web, iOS and Android apps. WPF, Silverlight, WinRT, XAML, UWP: there were too many changes, rewrites and deprecations. Windows Phone, bril…

I think developers prefer a crappy but stable technologies with a proven market over uncertain and fast-moving technologies. Businesses - yes. Developers - my experience says no (myself included).

I'd prefer to use a functional API with a few warts and limitations over having to learn yet another goddamn 'fast-moving modern' interface which will disappear within five years.

Churn might be great for job security but it's a huge waste of everyone's time and efforts.