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WinForms is still a great way to write desktop software if you don't need all the features of WPF, I just started a new project with it and have been really productive.
The data binding in WPF seemed more powerful to me... enabling MVVM approaches, although I'm sure the same is possible in WinForms as well. Does WinForms still get love in the new versions of the SDK or is it considered done now?
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I don't know, I've done both (Silverlight MVVM and Winforms) plenty and I prefer the manual approach. Databinding is cool until you have any sort of complexity in your app, and then it becomes unwieldy quickly.
Databinding (and MVVM by extension) is ok only in very simple scenarios. Once you hit some complexity you end up in a world of hurt. Databinding is not a leaky abstraction ,it's a fucking flood abstraction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Databinding (and MVVM by extension) is ok only in very simple scenarios. Once you hit some complexity you end up in a world of hurt. Databinding is not a leaky abstraction ,it's a fucking flood abstraction.
Um, if you're using MVVM, then by definition you should have a clean separation between the properties of your Model, which is part of your domain, and the properties of your View-Model, which is part of your presentation tier and directly tied to a particular View. If you have this, what exactly can be leaked by databinding? The only things you're binding to should be properties of your View-Model.
Probably the most infamous one is that the WPF listview with multiple select enabled doesn't allow you to bind to the collection of selected items. Instead you have to do all sorts of work arounds, that while individually aren't too bad, when put all together, makes all the other hard work you put into doing MVVM on the components that you fully control super frustrating.
Thinkpad love there as well. His "custom" computer appears to be an X220 tablet in an enclosure.
Bear in mind this project was started around the same time there was a ton of uncertainty around the future of Silverlight and WPF. Alas, one did die, one lives on for now. But nobody knew that at the time, including Intel, or apparently Microsoft. WinForms has never faced any forward compatibility uncertainty so it is a good long-term bet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Um, if you're using MVVM, then by definition you should have a clean separation between the properties of your Model, which is part of your domain, and the properties of your View-Model, which is part of your presentation tier and directly tied to a particular View. If you have this, what exactly can be leaked by databinding? The only things you're binding to should be properties of your View-Model.
While that's largely true when dealing with pure business logic, there's a maddeningly large amount of UI logic, and hybrid business/UI logic that becomes really annoying (or outright impossible) to handle in pure MVVM with WPF. Reasons for this include that many user interface properties aren't exposed nicely to allow data-binding. Probably the most infamous one is that the WPF listview with multiple select enabled…
You hit the nail on the head with this. This is why I don't like to use WPF outside of writing small utilities.