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Rust/WinRT Public Preview

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#91

Post by akiselev »

munchbunny wrote: post #60
cs702 wrote: post #15

You have to hand it to Microsoft: It may be the only large software company that doesn't seem susceptible to not-invented-here syndrome. It's true that Microsoft historically has been an intensely competitive company, often trying to undermine competing technologies, e.g., with "embrace and extend" strategies. But whenever a competing technology -- whether a language, or a framework, or an application -- gains adopti…

From firsthand experience... Microsoft has quite a bit of NIH syndrome. Still does. They've just gotten better about it in recent years.

Also from firsthand experience: for many (not most) of MS's projects, that's the right decision. A lot of their software is at a unique intersection between consumer and enterprise support which at their scale often has unique requirements.

But then MS's bureaucracy can grind down even the most well thought out projects (Also getting better, though).

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#92

Post by loeg »

acdha wrote: post #43
nemothekid wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in their blood - its the 'Embrace' in EEE.

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.

EEE did not end 3 decades ago and Balmer was only 1 CEO ago, so... no?

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#93

Post by favorited »

jhoechtl wrote: post #58

Would this be possible for Go too?

It is possible for any language, really. They already have 3 language projections for C++ (C++/WinRT being the newest, by the same person running this Rust projection), C#, VB, and JavaScript.

Under the hood they call out to (and potentially expose) COM interfaces which are C. So if your language has C interop, or if it could be added, something like this could be built.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#94

Post by loeg »

pianoben wrote: post #84
pathartl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like they're doing all they can to get developers on their platform. Not to establish Windows developers like they have in the past, but to have others see Windows as just another platform. We're reaching a revolution from moving from x86 to ARM and I think the more Microsoft positions themselves like this, the less likely they are to be left in some weird compatibility limbo. As weird as this sounds, I feel…

In fact, the _have_ transitioned to ARM, way back around the time of the first Surface tablet. Windows and Office have been running on ARM since at least, what, 2012?

Windows NT in 2000? I guess ARM was not a going concern at the time, but Windows was remarkably portable in 2000 before the dark decade of more or less exclusively Wintel.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#95

Post by loeg »

adzm wrote: post #85

With Windows 7 on its way out slowly, WinRT is becoming more palatable.

Slowly?! Hasn't Win7 been dead for years?

> Latest release Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) / February 22, 2011; 9 years ago

> Mainstream support for Windows 7 ended on January 13, 2015.

There is:

> Extended support for Windows 7 ended on January 14, 2020.

But that is referring to very specific business contracts, not casual users pretending EOL never happened.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#96

Post by acdha »

blub wrote: post #82
acdha wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Concentration of power is (or at least I thought it was) obviously bad. This is why there's laws protecting against that but either they're not enforced or they weren't updated to the internet age.

It is a concern but being popular is not the same as having high power: GitHub has lock-in to the extent that it's a great service but it's not exactly like they're changing Git to prevent you from using your own self-hosted service, Gitlab, BitBucket, etc. Similarly, VSCode is open-source with tons of competitors: where's the angle where they have much ability to dictate anything to users?

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#97

Post by discreteevent »

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

I don't think the basic architecture is going to go away. Even some of the newest operating systems have something quite similar:

https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/docs/+/ea2fce2874556205204d...

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#98

Post by cheez »

tambourine_man wrote: post #89
cs702 wrote: post #15

You have to hand it to Microsoft: It may be the only large software company that doesn't seem susceptible to not-invented-here syndrome. It's true that Microsoft historically has been an intensely competitive company, often trying to undermine competing technologies, e.g., with "embrace and extend" strategies. But whenever a competing technology -- whether a language, or a framework, or an application -- gains adopti…

It’s always easy to be an open source proponent when you are the underdog. And Microsoft, as crazy as it sounds to me, kinda is when it comes to cool dev stuff. We'll have to see if they have really changed or just waiting to regain ground and going back to the extinguish part. But what I can confidently say is that, of all the BigCorps, Microsoft is the only one actively trying to make developer's life easier. Apple…

The Microsoft you remember is at a time when dev tools were "the future". They are now the past. Microsoft's ruthlessness is no doubt focused elsewhere now. For example, do they go out of their way to make your code portable b/w Azure and Google? Probably not.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#99

Post by kerng »

munchbunny wrote: post #88
ape4 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F# is Microsoft's invented here version of Java

I thought C# was Microsoft's NIH version of Java?

To be fair Microsoft wanted to adopt Java, and with J++ they added Windows specific base libraries and make it work with COM. One could still compile ordinary Java back then also with J++.

Although they weren't allowed to do that if I remember right, so they basically had to create C# - and C# turned out to be fantastic in my opinion.

Re: Rust/WinRT Public Preview

#100

Post by noisem4ker »

Koshkin wrote: post #69
fortran77 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They _lost_? They have a 1.36 trillion USD Market cap (today). That's more than Apple's 1.29 trillion USD Market cap. It's hilarious how people on hacker news live in this bubble where Microsoft has faded away into irrelevance. And they're also very good. I'm running Windows 10 right now on a dual-monitor, dual NVidia GPU, dual Xeon system and everything "just works."

> dual-monitor, dual NVidia GPU Not exactly thanks to Microsoft.

To their credit, stability of such a setup might be facilitated by Windows' fine display driver model (WDDM).
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