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Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

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Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#21

Post by andwaal »

What is never really can grasp is the conclusion that no new versions equals a dead platform. In the case with WPF(and Silverlight to some degree) the platform is so mature, that one got all the features that is needed to create rich applications, while having a nice developer experience. It`s just done, no need for future versions and fixes, so one can start build things with it instead.

I have(as many others) made the transitions from building WPF/Silverlight applications to HTML/JS and im astonished over how eager the community is it solve the same problem over and over again. It seems like everyone just goes ahead and reimplementing their own solution instead of improving whats already exists. Every week someone releases a framework, tool etc. thats exactly the same as the five alternatives already existing and often the only difference is that it`s "implemented by us". And I will not start with NodeJs, 40 frameworks for spinning up an http-server. Congratulations.

So my two cents, long live WPF, the mature framework for creating Windows applications for many, many years to come!( at least in enterprise ;) )

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#22

Post by grokys »

Personal plug here: I've been tinkering with writing a GUI toolkit along the lines of WPF here: https://github.com/grokys/Perspex/. It's obviously very early days and this is as much for my curiosity as to how things could be done differently as setting out to replace WPF, but it may interest some of you...

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#23

Post by fleitz »

amaks wrote: post #17

WPF is another victim in ever changing technological landscape in Microsoft. Who uses or even remembers these days ATL/WTL, MFC, OLE DB, ADO, DAO, ODBC etc. etc.?

Now you know why MSFT has the largest developer community in the world.

There are endless lists of technologies that do the exact same thing.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#24

Post by grokys »

andwaal wrote: post #21

What is never really can grasp is the conclusion that no new versions equals a dead platform. In the case with WPF(and Silverlight to some degree) the platform is so mature, that one got all the features that is needed to create rich applications, while having a nice developer experience. It`s just done, no need for future versions and fixes, so one can start build things with it instead. I have(as many others) made…

> all the features that is needed to create rich applications, while having a nice developer experience

I wouldn't say that is true. For example even renaming a Window/UserControl in Visual Studio doesn't work correctly. There are a ton of things that could be improved about WPF, not least (off the top of my head):

* Use Direct2D instead of DirectX9. The renderer used by WPF has been shown to be very inefficient compared to Direct2D.

* Multiple selection is a hack.

* Can't bind data grid column properties.

* BasedOn="{StaticResource {x:Type Button}}" -- eurgh

* How fucking difficult it is to save an image?

* How fucking difficult it is to get an image's pixels (how do you work out Stride?)

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#25

Post by mu_killnine »

maxxxxx wrote: post #19
mu_killnine wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty fair criticism. But once you've gotten it, it's very powerful (incredible data binding!). And I think we need to be sure to separate WPF from "XAML". XAML, for certain, is here to stay for quite a while. I recall talking to Carl Franklin about how Windows 8's UI layer is written in XAML. Given that, I think it's fair to say that the time you invest in XAML won't be wasted if you're a Windows developer…

Good luck finding a company that uses Win 8 so you can actually deploy a WinRT app. And wait until they lose interest in WinRT too like they have done with every new technology quickly.

My guess is most companies will skip Win8 like they skipped Vista. Windows 10 looks to be what enterprise will rally around.

But for fat applications, what's your alternative? Java is, at best, parity with something like WinRT but can't leverage the benefits that MS can bring to users with its native platform (assuming a big, MS-centric enterprise). WPF, as we've already said, isn't going to get any more of the pie. Let's not kid ourselves about Winforms or platforms that haven't even embraced data binding.

In the meantime, you can't cross off Xamarin as a means to bring these WinRT applications to even more device types.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#26

Post by logfromblammo »

Given enough constraints on the development environment, WPF can turn out to be the best choice.

Those constraints are usually as follows:

- Our developers cannot use anything not written and distributed by Microsoft, and can use only our existing licenses.

- The end users will not have full administrative control over their workstations. They might not be able to install a Java VM, Flash, Silverlight, or even a browser other than the version of IE that came with their OS.

This sort of environment is depressingly common in the government contracting sector. When your choices are WPF, WinForms, ASP.NET, Excel macros, or Access database, the first option seems pretty attractive. And this is especially relevant when the documentation from Microsoft promotes a model-view-viewmodel design pattern for WPF applications. That's a great way to get people who haven't read a single paragraph about best practices since graduation to step boldly into a new decade, even if it is not the one the rest of us currently live in.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#29

Post by peetle »

grokys wrote: post #24
andwaal wrote: post #21

What is never really can grasp is the conclusion that no new versions equals a dead platform. In the case with WPF(and Silverlight to some degree) the platform is so mature, that one got all the features that is needed to create rich applications, while having a nice developer experience. It`s just done, no need for future versions and fixes, so one can start build things with it instead. I have(as many others) made…

> all the features that is needed to create rich applications, while having a nice developer experience I wouldn't say that is true. For example even renaming a Window/UserControl in Visual Studio doesn't work correctly. There are a ton of things that could be improved about WPF, not least (off the top of my head): * Use Direct2D instead of DirectX9. The renderer used by WPF has been shown to be very inefficient comp…

One should not confuse the IDE with the technology, but I'd agree that the Visual Studio integration with WPF (although amazing in theory) feels constantly buggy - even after years of work.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#30

Post by mschaef »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #12

A lot of the criticism I've heard stems around the steep XAML learning curve. OTOH I've only done WinForms and ASP.NET stuff, so I haven't had first hand experience.

XAML by itself is actually fairly easy to work with because it doesn't actually do that much: At it's core, XAML boils down to an XML-based mechanism for constructing objects. Squint your eyes just right, and it starts to look like the markup for an IoC container:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/17188/Inversion-of-Contr...

Where things start to get complicated are the objects that you create with XAML... (which is where the WPF framework comes into play.)

Five or six years ago, I prototyped a system using XAML/WPF to build an HMI system for an industrial process control applications. The system served up XAML from a server that got loaded by a client to construct UI objects. It then inspected the Binding objects that the XAML created and started subscribing to the appropriate server-side data points. It came together within a couple days and really ran quite well.

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