Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#1

Post by e1ven » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 4:00 AM UTC

Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
arstechnica.com

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#2

Post by powertower » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 4:36 AM UTC

Windows 8 is giving developers one more option: In tablet mode you can write the UI part of the application (the widget) in HTML5 and JS.

Author's profile: (Microsoft Contributor) "Peter Bright dropped out of university (after about five minutes) to work as a software developer writing C++ and C#."

After reading that article I propose that he must have also spent another 5 minutes programming before deciding on his new career path of writing sensational crap.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#3

Post by daeken » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 4:39 AM UTC

I'm not horrified and I don't know any Windows developers that are (although I'm sure there are some out there). This is being blown way out of proportion, I believe.

Edit: I especially like the assertion that WPF is not fast. Evidently the author has never done much with the 3d transform functionality in WPF -- you can do insanely performant graphically-intensive apps using it. The fact that most developers don't understand how the API works doesn't mean the API doesn't kick ass. I'm not a fan of XAML, but everything else about WPF is really, really nice.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#4

Post by nigelsampson » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 4:39 AM UTC

powertower wrote: post #2

Windows 8 is giving developers one more option: In tablet mode you can write the UI part of the application (the widget) in HTML5 and JS. Author's profile: (Microsoft Contributor) "Peter Bright dropped out of university (after about five minutes) to work as a software developer writing C++ and C#." After reading that article I propose that he must have also spent another 5 minutes programming before deciding on his n…

This seems the most likely option in my opinion. A lot of panic and scaremongering based off a few snippets.

I imagine we'll see other ways to build into the tablet UI apart from html5/js.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#5

Post by kenjackson » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 4:50 AM UTC

After a few minutes on the internets I discovered a little gem of a thread:

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(79...

In this thread you'll see much more clearly what MS is planning. It's not just HTML/JS for these immersive apps. Rather it appears that the CLR will become a first class part of Windows. If you are a Windows dev or are interested in Windows dev, this is a must read thread. In fact I'm shocked that no major publications have noticed it.

There are lots of really interesting nuggets in there. In many regards I think they're finally delivering on a lot of the promises of Longhorn.

I must say I'm excited about it, and looking forward to September now. MS screwed up on the PR, but I think they may have gotten the technological direction right.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#6

Post by Yhippa » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 4:51 AM UTC

What developers are horrified by this? I thought for your enterprise apps that you can continue to use the Windows 7 skin. For developers of the new Windows 8 platform I think this is a great opportunity for developers to get content into the hands of traditional users in a new way.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#7

Post by cheez » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 4:53 AM UTC

No one is horrified. HTML/CSS are great for some user interfaces but it's always going to be behind WPF.

I think it's just marketing BS from Microsoft, to be honest.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#8

Post by becomevocal » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 4:54 AM UTC

I'm really, really excited about this direction for Windows 8. I could see myself jumping on the bandwagon if they handle the API correctly.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#9

Post by X-Istence » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:01 AM UTC

At this point you know it is a non-issue because Arstechnica is covering it about six weeks too late[1].

I have talked to many different developers and every one of them that is developing in C# and .NET are not worried at all. Main reason? This stuff is not really going to fly well within the corporate world, corporations still need their custom built applications (using older source bases most of the time), they still need to use all of their productivity apps, and they don't think the office team is suddenly going to re-write Word, PowerPoint, and Excel for a touch based graphical user interface.

All the noise I've heard so far are just the news sites blowing it out of proportion. Frankly it is getting annoying seeing it pop up every couple of days.

[1] (I really don't care what the actual timeframe is)

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#10

Post by barrydahlberg » Mon, Jun 13, 2011, 5:03 AM UTC

Why the media has made Microsoft developers horrified about their random speculation.