Meanwhile a single developer makes performant native UIs in his first native program by actually learning how the OS and winapi work
Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
181–190 of 308 posts
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s wishful thinking. Just because things haven’t changed in the past doesn’t mean it won’t change in the future. I don’t doubt that the amount of code will not reduce, it’ll just be easier and easier to get AI to fix it. We are still less than two years into widespread use of this technology, and it’s surprising how good it is. I am a ‘greybeard’ compiler guy and modern LLMs fix compiler bugs better than me, to a…
As compiler guy, how do you see direct machine code generation? I firmly believe having LLMs generate code for current languages is a transition step, just like Assembly devs had to be convinced optimising compilers were generating the same kind of code they would write themselves. They are not there yet, but the day will come.
Presumably this would need some advancements in formal verification to make sure the results are correct.
But ignoring that for now, LLMs can already do better than modern compilers when it comes to optimizing code.
It has become a neat way of finding opportunities to implement in a compiler.
Give the LLM a compiler generated piece of assembly and it will sometimes spit out a slightly better version. Then you try and figure out if it's possible to implement it in the compiler. This works really well for blind spots in compilers like generating good vectorized code.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still writing win32 stuff like it’s 1995 here. We have bits of ATL/MFC hanging out which are throughly abandoned. I don’t trust WinUI at all. I was surprised, when I spoke to a former colleague, to find that an internal tool I wrote 25 years ago is still being maintained. Win32 as well.
I was going to ask about Win32. I haven't had to do it in a while, but if I had to write a desktop app in windows, that would be what I would reach for. It's still supported... is their any indication that it won't be for many years to come? Also, it looks better, in my humble opinion. It's probably lacking features that I'm uninterested in.
Still works fine. High DPI stuff is a dick but that’s about it.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Still writing win32 stuff like it’s 1995 here. We have bits of ATL/MFC hanging out which are throughly abandoned. I don’t trust WinUI at all. I was surprised, when I spoke to a former colleague, to find that an internal tool I wrote 25 years ago is still being maintained. Win32 as well.
MFC support is still in the latest Visual Studio, and it looks like ATL as well.
It’s in there because it’s a cockroach. It is throughly abandoned though, frozen in time.
You can observe this looking at the state of old outlook.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
MFC support is still in the latest Visual Studio, and it looks like ATL as well.
I was surprised to see ATL/MFC received security updates such as Spectre mitigation. So there is still some support for these 30 year old components.
That’s only because half office hangs off it. If it didn’t they wouldn’t have just left it.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the WinUI community calls, I would assert all new employees have zero Windows experience and management doesn't care to give them proper skills. Too many questions that any Windows developer would know why the question was being asked, where they either couldn't answer or had puzzled looks on why the questions were being asked in first place. That is also a reason why now there are Webview2 instances all over th…
so microsoft gave up and the web won? swift ui apps have some webkit views like the app store, music app etc
Well, to be fair, Microsoft decided to kill the Windows API that everybody knew, and spent about a decade and half creating a replacement every few years that couldn't actually replace the original thing.
It's hard to survive that. Honestly, I don't even know what the GP is talking about when they say the devs don't know "Windows".
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess Fortune 500 still runs on desktop windows? (Don’t know but this is just my guess).
Yes, but for how long? At some point, IT realizes everything's in the browser, and general-purpose computing is a security risk.
Not every company is a startup that only needs gmail and Figma, though. The ecosystem of LoB apps and device controller software is ginormous, and not going away any time soon.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#188Ironic that they're opening up all the new crappy stuff, but not the good old stuff like Win32.
Maybe they're scared of WINE?
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Office is a completely separate team divorced from Windows proper. Unless Office deemed it wise to rewrite their UI, they're not going to do so (and it's a frankenstein of a Win32 UI). Office on Windows relies heavily on COM and other Win32-only libraries to function. I can't think of a valid reason to rewrite Office to that extent. They already have Office for the web and Mac Office; while not identical in features,…
No, MSO should not be rewritten. It might be adapted to a more universal UI toolkit, if Win32 UI becomes problematic as is. COM is also not going to go anywhere, but I wonder if WASM-compiled components and native code-compiled components could interact via DCOM over the internet.
It makes a lot of sense to wire COM and WASM in some smart way.
Re: Microsoft is open sourcing Windows 11's UI framework
#190I am worried about the future of native UI technologies on Windows. Traditionally at least the developers of operating systems have eaten their own dogfood and have at least tried to implement well-performing & visually consistent native applications to serve as an example to others. Windows 11 has largely done the opposite. Windows has had minimal but perfectly functional native email and calendar apps at least sinc…
From the WinUI community calls, I would assert all new employees have zero Windows experience and management doesn't care to give them proper skills. Too many questions that any Windows developer would know why the question was being asked, where they either couldn't answer or had puzzled looks on why the questions were being asked in first place. That is also a reason why now there are Webview2 instances all over th…
Do Windows developers use Windows or Mac at work?