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Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

arstechnica.com

31–40 of 106 posts

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

#31

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 fac…

Looks to me that it's not so much that "the CLR will become first class" as they've broken down the CLR and .NET into little pieces (GC = SLR/Redhawk, type system/metadata = WinRT/WinTypes.dll, XAML = Jupiter/DirectUI, C# = the new AOT compiler, if it exists), and are using each one individually where appropriate.

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

#32
tl;dr: Based on a comment by Microsoft VP, Julie Larson-Green, that a certain weather application they recently made was done using a platform based on HTML 5 and JS, ars technica's Peter Bright somehow comes to a conclusion that this means that HTML 5 is now going to be Microsoft's preferred development platform, and then goes into a long rant on how disastrous this will be for all the Windows developers because it will make all their current knowledge useless and will force them to use a suboptimal technology to develop their applications. At the end of the article he concludes that, yeah, that's not actually going to happen, because Microsoft isn't stupid.

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

#33
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right. But the consequence of that is, of course, that the touch driven "immersive" part is only going to be skin deep. Which in turn means that Windows 8 is going to fail spectacularly on tablets, for the exact same reasons every previous Windows tablet failed.

consumer != corporate

The gap between consumer and corporate is getting smaller every day. This trend is only going to continue, so betting on something appealing only to enterprise, not consumers, is a self-defeating strategy.

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

#34
If Microsoft wants to destroy itself then it should focus only on HTML5/Javascript. Corporations are all about speed and efficiency and to compare .Net vs HTML5/Javascript is insane.

I've been programming in .Net for years now, but recently as I got new projects I figured to use them in HTML5/Javascript instead. But after countless of hours research it turns out .Net is by far the most efficient and only option in terms of speed and most direct relation to the hardware, which was important for my projects. They both play a part and neither should be ruled out. Using HTML5/Jquery for web projects and .Net for projects which requires quick access to local resources. Two different worlds. If I were Microsoft I would focus fuse those two worlds together. And if they can add 1+1 this is their intent.

The developers and corporations will continue to use whatever means to maximize profit with the most efficient way for their app. And the corporations in whole is who steer the direction of the consumer market in the end. Not one or two companies. Corporations use .Net not because Microsoft tells them to do so, but because it is most the efficient.

From a consumer point of view it might not be so easy to understand how these things works, as all you see in media is Microsoft that and Apple that and then one might think that's all there is to it.

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

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

consumer != corporate

The gap between consumer and corporate is getting smaller every day. This trend is only going to continue, so betting on something appealing only to enterprise, not consumers, is a self-defeating strategy.

Pardon my french, but this a shallow phrase. Typically enterprise UIs has dozens of input controls, not because the Developers suck but because they need a lot more input than the google search page, a media player or something like that. Touch Interfaces will always suck in those cases, and HTML5 is still far away from handling those beasts in an elegant way.

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

#36
post #32

tl;dr: Based on a comment by Microsoft VP, Julie Larson-Green, that a certain weather application they recently made was done using a platform based on HTML 5 and JS, ars technica's Peter Bright somehow comes to a conclusion that this means that HTML 5 is now going to be Microsoft's preferred development platform, and then goes into a long rant on how disastrous this will be for all the Windows developers because it…

> Peter Bright somehow comes to a conclusion that this means that HTML 5 is now going to be Microsoft's preferred development platform

Actually, unless my memory fails me, it was that Microsoft video showing the tiled interface of Windows 8 that did that - it kind of implied HTML5 was the tool of choice (or, at least, the glue) for tiled and that tiled was the future. The thread kenjackson pointed out tells another story, but we can blame Microsoft for some confusion here.

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

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

consumer != corporate

The gap between consumer and corporate is getting smaller every day. This trend is only going to continue, so betting on something appealing only to enterprise, not consumers, is a self-defeating strategy.

Enterprise will always be different than the consumer market until the nature of the enterprise decentralizes.

The key driving distinction between enterprise and consumer is that in the enterprise the person using the software had almost no say in its purchase and thus has almost no say in its development. Consumer software works well when you use it, enterprise software looks good when you see it in a powerpoint presentation next to a feature checkbox, or hear about it on a golf course. Since no one making the purchasing decision will ever actually use it, you're pretty much guaranteed sales. Especially if you can pair it with expensive training that is necessary because your software is designed so poorly.

Having features is generally how you get through an RFP the purpose of an RFP is to CYA. Thus if you have the RFP approved by management and the proposal meets the RFP you're guaranteed a sale if no one else can check the boxes. If you ever get approved for an RFP you should immediately apply to become the vendor of record / preferred vendor for everything in that space guaranteeing more sales of your atrocious software.

Never design software that works in the enterprise as you'll lose out on massive support / training revenue. The worse your software is the better it will sell. Hopefully you can figure out how to sell software that doesn't actually do ANYTHING until they hire programmers to customize it. (I'm looking at you CRM vendors)

Once you've been through a couple of these things you'll understand how it works and how crappy software is incentivized by the RFP system.

You should also have an RFP template ready that contains all the features your software has so that lazy employees from megacorp can submit it for approval. Your sales people should be all too ready to help the employee out with this task so that they have a very professional and tailored RFP. Now that they don't have anything to do that day you should take them out for a beer to celebrate how fast they submitted the RFP to management. Management will remember them as the guy who gets stuff done so quickly and professionally, they'll move up quickly.

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

#38

This article seems to be making the assumption that the Windows 8 api will be vanilla HTML5/JS. My impression from the presentation was that they might be using HTML as the layout format and JS as the language but that there would be a lot of non-standard widgets and APIs exposed to both layers. If so, it's too early to dismiss the technology as "inadequate".

I was quite sure that would be the case, as Microoft would never allow such an easy way to port Windows apps to other environments. Whatever glue is tied in HTLM/JS environment, it'll run deep into the Windows APIs in such a way no HTML5/JS app will be easily ported to, say, Google's ChromeOS.

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

#39
post #13
post #6

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.

MS has lost a lot of trust when they killed off VFP and then VB6. People with large codebases had to migrate and it means loss of competitive advantage making new code do old things.

Most VB6 shops I know took the kool aid and went VB.Net or C#. It would take a whole lot lot of disappointment for them to move away from Microsoft.

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

#40
Stop whining ; it's one of few actual smart moves coming out of MS in years. And my MS developer friends are not complaining; it makes their life easier because now they can easily switch, get more jobs and do stuff that's actually 'cool' again (yep, programming for Win is very not cool in most every corner of the world while building hip stuff in HTML5 is); it makes nice money but things you have to do for 30+ years, 8 hours/day should not be about money alone.
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