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Windows native app development is a mess

domenic.me

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Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#301

Post by nananana9 »

feznyng wrote: post #264
themafia wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your application saves me time (is intuitive) or enables me to do tasks that I couldn't do before (is powerful) then I don't care one whit what it looks like. As long as it doesn't actively hurt my eyes to stare at you can do whatever you want.

Sure, if I'm building something for myself or fellow hobbyists this approach works (though in that case I'd prefer a good TUI/CLI). But if you're building an app for the average person, how it looks has a big effect on whether they choose it over an alternative.

Programmers and designers thinking the average person is a moron is one of the two reasons almost no good software is writren today.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#302

Post by domenicd »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #278
contextfree wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are like three settings pages that use JavaScript and React Native, the vast majority of Settings is C++ and XAML/WinUI2

but that was already developed, all new development it's going with web based at microsoft

Id be interested in a source for both this and the parent's comment. How do we know which settings pages use which tech? Have people been decompiling them?

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#303

Post by userbinator »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #204
ozim wrote: post #6

That is why everyone even Microsoft themselves does Electron. Running with html/css/js has benefits it really is open and free development based on international standards and not locked into any single big tech.

Say what you will about Apple, they at least still think it’s important to support and do native development, especially for their OS. Microsoft might as well have bought webOS as their new Windows replacement and admitted they’ve given up on native apps.

Do original Macintosh binaries still run on the latest macOS? I haven't looked much at the situation on that side but I believe Apple has no equivalent to the Win32 API.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#304

Post by hypercube33 »

fsloth wrote: post #39
intrasight wrote: post #4

"So when I went to work on my app, I was astonished to find that twenty years after the release of WPF, the boilerplate had barely changed." Such is the benefit and the curse, I guess, of having the Windows API being locked in the distant past for backwards compatibility. I've always been surprised that Microsoft didn't do a full operating system refactor and provide a compatibility layer for running old binaries. Pe…

"I've always been surprised that Microsoft didn't do a full operating system refactor and provide a compatibility layer for running old binaries" Just keeping a legacy system in working order is different skillset than writing a new system from scratch. So you need a new team. Nothing from Windows maintenance transfers. Maybe would require hiring someone who knows how to design an OS. It would be a major undertaking,…

I mean technically they did with Windows on NT and again with Windows on Windows 64. Vista was also a huge redesign from the 1990s NT to a lot of the new technologies they'd made in Longhorn.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#305

Post by Marsymars »

int_19h wrote: post #277
NetMageSCW wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried WinForms? It isn’t the latest hotness so Microsoft has to be dragged kicking and screaming to support it in current VS, but they were forced to do so because corporate developers still have some clout.

I still think that WPF was the peak desktop UI framework. Extremely powerful with lots of small composable primitives, can easily do declarative but drop into more traditional event-driven imperative style where it makes sense.

I live in a bizarro universe where I started my career working on an expansive WPF desktop app on .NET Framework 4.0, and am still working on it now on .NET 10. From my perspective it's been WPF the entire time, and it's been pretty okay.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#306

Post by bigyabai »

gzread wrote: post #215
paulddraper wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming with GUIs?

Why wouldn't you program a GUI with a GUI if one is available? Avoiding the use of WYSIWYG editors when making GUIs is like avoiding the use of musical instruments when writing songs.

Visual Studio and XCode are way, way overkill for most software and eventually constraining for bigger projects too.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#307

Post by Marsymars »

gzread wrote: post #215
paulddraper wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming with GUIs?

Why wouldn't you program a GUI with a GUI if one is available? Avoiding the use of WYSIWYG editors when making GUIs is like avoiding the use of musical instruments when writing songs.

I'm not saying you should never program with a GUI, but it comes at a cost of being able to read the code and tell what the result of the code will be, and all the associated benefits of version control and code reviews that you lose.

And as a side-effect of that, merge conflicts become murder when your "Fix right-hand margins" commit with a 20 line readable +/- diff instead becomes a 1000 line +/- diff.

The one time I built an iOS app using the xCode IB so that I could get up to speed more quickly, I really came to regret it several years into the project.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#308

Post by domenicd »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #150

I’m still confused which frameworks are tied to which “visuals”. Ignoring the web-frameworks, do Win32 apps inherently look like Windows XP buttons or can they look more modern? It might be nice if the article could add screenshots, a few of the Wikipedia links have a screenshot, but again I’m not sure if you’re limited to that UI or not. I also like the carousel in the article showing the tray menus, but again not s…

From what I understand, Win32/MFC/WinForms inherently are stuck around Vista visuals, with no dark mode support. Win32/MFC also have no high-DPI support, so you get gross upscaling. (WinForms supposedly has some support for high DPI, but with many open issues. [1])

Now, I'm not 100% sure, since there are so many commenters in this thread saying "just use Win32/MFC like a real man". (Most of them ignoring the memory safety angle.) I might do a follow-up asking Claude to reproduce my UI in the various frameworks to test. But my strong guess is that we just have a bunch of HackerNews curmudgeons who are happy to foist pixelated Vista-era light-mode-only UIs on their users.

[1]: https://github.com/dotnet/winforms/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20sta...

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#309

Post by domenicd »

vegasje wrote: post #160
fermentation wrote: post #142

The Windows code signing experience has prevented me from shipping apps that otherwise run perfectly fine on the platform. It is a nightmare and I cannot believe it wasn't called out in the "We want to fix Windows" blog post. Just do exactly what Apple does. Charge me $100 directly from you and let me build an .exe that I can distribute on my website.

This isn't well-known, so I figured I'd mention it. Microsoft offers a service called Azure Artifact Signing (used to be called Trusted Signing) that manages code signing for you: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/artifact-s... It's $9.99/mo, and you don't need to worry about procuring or renewing code signing certs.

US and Canada residents only, sadly.

Re: Windows native app development is a mess

#310

Post by domenicd »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #179

Excellent summary of the stupid state of Windows native GUI app development after the complete lack of direction or coherence Microsoft has shown. Not to mention the irony of Visual Studio not having a GUI designer for anything except Windows Forms.

A lot of people complain about this, but there seemed to be a reasonable XAML designer when I was making my WinUI 3 app. I didn't really use it (my app was simple enough that hand-crafting the XAML felt worthwhile to ensure everything was nicely aligned and not full of any unnecessary designer gunk). So I suspect it does suck, since otherwise people would not complain as much. But one does exist.
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