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Rust/WinRT Public Preview

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#71

Post by winter_blue »

hota_mazi wrote: post #20
xrd wrote: post #6

I stopped reading at "The Windows Runtime is based on Component Object Model (COM) APIs..." Is that a bad choice on my part? I see COM and think of OLE, CORBA and I remember that I'm old and going to die pretty soon (within the next 40-50 years almost assuredly). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

COM is a fantastic invention and implementation. Granted, it was pretty painful in C and somewhat in C++, but all the other languages (VB and C# mostly, but plenty of others) really unlock the power of COM. Nothing like that remotely exists on Linux or macOS.

COM brings back a lot of fantastic old memories.

When I was a kid, I used to make VB6 applications, and I'd be able to get custom widgets from the Internet, and import them into my VB6 project seamlessly. It was truly amazing, and mind-expanding.

The JS/React/etc web ecosystem doesn't come anywhere close, in terms of the ease-of-use that VB6 had.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#72

Post by Koshkin »

xrd wrote: post #6

I stopped reading at "The Windows Runtime is based on Component Object Model (COM) APIs..." Is that a bad choice on my part? I see COM and think of OLE, CORBA and I remember that I'm old and going to die pretty soon (within the next 40-50 years almost assuredly). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model

That's what they called "going native" (vs. using .NET).

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#73

Post by derefr »

contextfree wrote: post #54
acdha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that’s from 3 decades and 2 CEOs ago, right? They’re a large company so there’s sure to be plenty to dislike but I don’t think it’s contributing much without some analysis of their actions in this century.

my view is that embrace/extend has really always been a general platform business thing and not specifically a Microsoft thing. it became infamously associated with Microsoft in '90s-00s because of the monopoly position they had. since Microsoft is still a platform business, it's reasonable to be wary of the negative potential of embrace/extend in connection with them, for the same reason it is in connection with Goo…

I don't see Microsoft doing much EEE on their modern non-cost-centre platform (Azure), though. Amazon is a much clearer example these days, with AWS having "embraced and extended" Postgres into Aurora, Redis into ElastiCache, and many other examples. (I don't know if AWS has ever gone all the way and "extinguished" any of the cores they've built upon, though?)

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#74

Post by contextfree »

edko wrote: post #42
contextfree wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is the WinUI 3 Win32 model is still going to be basically doing what you can already do with XAML Islands, just packaged more nicely with wrapper classes and Visual Studio templates and so on, so by itself it doesn't change the underlying HWND vs. CoreWindow situation (just wraps it). There are already Win32 apps, like Windows Terminal, that implement a "UWP" UI by doing their entire UI in one big XA…

Rust/WinRT has really triggered my interest. For someone who hasn't been following Windows development for more than almost two decades, what's a good read to understand the different models of app creation and distribution?

Unfortunately it's a bit of a mess right now for reasons alkonaut mentioned in his post upthread. The official Microsoft doc page -> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/ is maybe an ok starting point for someone with a vague memory of Windows desktop development who's curious about what's new, but I could see someone getting lost in a maze of acronyms and links, especially if you're trying to use it with a newly semi-supported language like Rust

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#75

Post by barrkel »

pjmlp wrote: post #29
blinkingled wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trouble is you can't really the solve the problem Microsoft had without using something like COM. Good news is you don't have to care - you can use C# or Rust and not worry about COM.

Somehow I think .NET would have been much better had it started as something like .NET Native, but yeah cannot turn back in time.

It would have been no good for web application servers, which is where the competition was going.

Native would have chased the declining native GUI market.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#76

Post by steveklabnik »

drej wrote: post #70
dtech wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a research proof of NIH? I guess C++ or Java should never have existed because how dare another programming language use that "OOP" concept Smalltalk popularized

That's not at all a point I'm making. OP praised Microsoft for embracing Rust and making it work well on Windows and thanked them for not doing their own thing and instead supporting an existing project. So I'm just pointing out to a very recent endeavour that goes against all of that. I just enjoyed the irony of it all, that's it. Not saying anything about anything else.

I think you're confusing Microsoft Research with Microsoft more broadly. A language research division (MSR does more than this, but they do this) is going to produce languages, that's their job. They often aren't trying to make a language that folks will use, but are instead exploring possibilities that end up improving other languages. Verona (and it is far too early to tell, IMHO) may end up in fact improving Rust. At the same time, Microsoft can and does support Rust, both as an organization on their own and indirectly via GitHub. These two things aren't in conflict, especially when you're talking about an organization as big as Microsoft is.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#77

Post by acdha »

yarrel wrote: post #51
acdha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that’s from 3 decades and 2 CEOs ago, right? They’re a large company so there’s sure to be plenty to dislike but I don’t think it’s contributing much without some analysis of their actions in this century.

Sure let's do that. This century they have bought up LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, and a stake in Facebook. They have replaced Atom with a fauxpen source editor. They've pointed them all at their locked down me-too cloud platform. And don't forget to develop your code on their locked down me-too tablet. What has changed is that MSDN is no longer delivered on CDs. That's because "Open Source" is a much cheaper deliver mechan…

> This century they have bought up LinkedIn, GitHub, npm, and a stake in Facebook. They have replaced Atom with a fauxpen source editor.

You left out the part where you explained why any of those acquisitions are a problem: LinkedIn is no worse than it was before, GitHub and npm are both popular services people choose to use without coercion, and whether or not you like it a lot of developers are switching to VSCode because it's a better tool which makes them more productive.

I don't what you believe to be true about their Azure integration but I know many people who use GitHub, npm, VSC, etc. and none of them use Azure so clearly there's some key step missing in that process.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#78

Post by pjmlp »

barrkel wrote: post #75
pjmlp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I think .NET would have been much better had it started as something like .NET Native, but yeah cannot turn back in time.

It would have been no good for web application servers, which is where the competition was going. Native would have chased the declining native GUI market.

Sure it would, after all that is where backend development is going to, back to AOT compilation toolchains.

If Delphi never managed much on the server side, it has more to do with the downfall from Borland than anything else.

So ASP + COM would be ASP.NET with COM+ Runtime instead.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#79

Post by pjmlp »

codys wrote: post #36
pjmlp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. After the whole political disaster that was Longhorn, the Windows team decided to rebuilt Longhorn ideas, originally based on .NET, and redo them with COM. So while many outside Windows have considered COM dead, actually since Vista all major Windows APIs have been provided as COM interfaces, the large majority of Win32 surface has been frozen since Windows XP. With WinRT/UA/UAP/UWP they have gone back to…

For linux I believe you mean D-Bus instead of DCOP. (that said, it's largely similar in concept)

You are right, that was the old protocol.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#80

Post by znpy »

I want to reply to many other comments but I want to make this more visible: Microsoft does not do Embrace-Extend-Extinguish anymore today (or at least, it does a lot lot less).

You know who does Embrace-Extend-Extinguish? Google.

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