Back when WPF/WCF and Silverlight was being pushed, I was initially cautious. I gave the technologies a few tries and ended up not liking them. I didn't like WPF because it seemed like an over-engineered version of SVG. I didn't like WCF because I was used to Remoting and didn't need another layer on top to learn. I didn't drink the Silverlight cool-aid because I knew javascript would get faster and Silverlight would eventually get overtaken by more open options. My guess is many microsoft devs felt the same way and didn't adopt these technologies because if they did, these technologies probably would have made it into Windows 8.
Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
61–70 of 106 posts
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#62Anyone else notice that within a year, you'll be able to write cross platform html5+js apps that run Black Berry, Windows 8, WebOS, Android and iOS? If this becomes the standard, like I suspect it will, one of the biggest losers will be companies that run big app stores.
It's not HTML+JS, it's HTML + JS + vendor-specific bindings + vendor-specific packaging & signature.
At best you'll be dealing with another fat abstraction layer with same kind of annoying small incompatibilities that plague(d) web browsers.
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#63tl;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 s…
The video the article links to has Julie Larson-Green going over the tiled interface. Different video from the one you are referring to I believe, but it covers almost the same exact material in a very similar manner.
Here's the link used in the article: http://allthingsd.com/20110601/microsofts-windows-8-demo-fro...
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#64I'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 un…
> The fact that most developers don't understand how the API works This signals a usability fail in my mind.
Nah the API just uses a different pattern from the "classic" WinForm development that most developers are used to.
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#65As someone who has been recently actually doing Windows development using HTML and Javascript I have a couple of observations. #1 Since I'm the only one in the thread who actually knows what they're talking about, naturally this will get downvoted to oblivion. Farewell sweet karma, I barely knew thee. :D #2 In order to actually get anything done you have to 'bust out' into the Windows APIs anyway. See here for a prim…
I've been doing web application development with HTML+CSS+JS for many years, most on Unix but recently fully embedded in the .NET world. I can tell you from my experience that as good as VS and the .NET framework can be, they're way behind when it comes to web application development for cross-platform clients. (And by cross-platform I mean browsers other than IE.)
For years most of my time has been spent developing through a terminal, with Vim as my editor and the world of Gnu command-line tools as my toolset. My primary development language was a scripting language, and my code-run-test iterative cycle took seconds. Now that I'm developing on .NET, it can take 20-30 seconds to restart my application to test a change I just made, not counting getting back to the part of the app I was working on. That's using the built-in IIS server; once I deploy to a real one I've got another round of testing and coding to do because they don't work the same way.
I was much more productive in the old environment. I'm happy to see Microsoft moving towards making HTML5+JS a full-fledged member of their development system; it means that their tools are going to get much better at developing web applications, and maybe I'll be able to reach my old productivity level again.
PS: I don't get the wailing about WPF getting replaced. WPF replaced WinForms, which replaced Win32, which replaced Win16, and I'm sure I'm missing some of the intermediates. The same kind of succession has occurred in most other parts of the Windows development stack. Microsoft has a long history of deprecating APIs and replacing them with completely different and incompatible APIs. All of these WPF developers, who I assume are simply too young to remember the earlier shifts, should be grateful that the new API has a fully backward-compatible history going back to the mid 90's and can carry them forward to any platform they might need to work on in the future.
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#66Anyone else notice that within a year, you'll be able to write cross platform html5+js apps that run Black Berry, Windows 8, WebOS, Android and iOS? If this becomes the standard, like I suspect it will, one of the biggest losers will be companies that run big app stores.
It's not HTML+JS, it's HTML + JS + vendor-specific bindings + vendor-specific packaging & signature. At best you'll be dealing with another fat abstraction layer with same kind of annoying small incompatibilities that plague(d) web browsers.
And yet web browsers support a far larger world of applications than .NET has. Consider that every website is essentially an independently-developed HTML-based application; do you think there are more of them than there are .NET-based applications?
Those small incompatibilities may be annoying, but they're a small price to pay for the otherwise easy development and broad reach of the HTML+JS+etc platform.
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#67As someone who has been recently actually doing Windows development using HTML and Javascript I have a couple of observations. #1 Since I'm the only one in the thread who actually knows what they're talking about, naturally this will get downvoted to oblivion. Farewell sweet karma, I barely knew thee. :D #2 In order to actually get anything done you have to 'bust out' into the Windows APIs anyway. See here for a prim…
> #2 In order to actually get anything done you have to 'bust out' into the Windows APIs anyway.
I remember this being the case when we did VB6 application programming. We were constantly "shelling" to Win32. I'm surprised it is still so like that.
Our favorite call was Win32 LockWindowUpdate.
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#68Windows 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…
I know Peter personally, and he is one of the more well-educated, intelligent, and astonishingly competent developers I know. Nice flamebait, though.
I read the article one more time, it does seem to be much more lucid now. I'll attribute my bad interpretation of it on the fact I read it very late last night - when it seemed to me he was saying that HTML5+JS was replacing .NET and WPF.
He still makes some absurd claims though:
"... they were told that all their experience, all their knowledge, and every program they have written in the past would be useless on Windows 8"
Flamebait. FUD. Just look at the comments there.
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#69I'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 un…
A simple to medium complexity WPF app will be slower than its Winforms or Win32 counter part. It will use a lot more memory too. There may be ways around this but why can't MS optimize it instead of forcing every developer to jump through the same hoops?
Higher than "simple to medium" scale/complexity situations are probably their priority when it comes to optimisation, on the basis that most smaller scale/complexity apps won't experience the difference and those that do can be tweaked by the programmer. A major factor to consider when optimising anything particularly something as generic as a large framework is that an optimisation for small scale situations can have a detrimental effect on larger ones (and vice-versa, though as problems are more noticeable on larger scales of size or complexity optimising for that at the expense of the smaller situations is the better over-all choice in many cases).
Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8
#70I'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 un…
> The fact that most developers don't understand how the API works This signals a usability fail in my mind.
I did find the official WPF docs and examples rather simplistic. Most of the advanced stuff I luckily stumbled upon on forums or blog posts. Perhaps developers don't have enough information to build upon the simple examples.