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Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#91

Post by KeyBoardG »

xradionut wrote: post #48

None of the Windows developers I work with or know in the community are not even concerned about this. Corporate and independent development in the .NET community are conservative and unlikely to jump on the latest thing from Redmond. They have been there, done that and got the free t-shirts for numerous hyped technologies. Most folks still haven't upgraded to VS 2010 or SQL Server 2008R2 yet. There's no point when t…

Totally agree. As a technical lead I tend to stay atleast one major release behind the lastest. However, you should try 2008R2. Its pretty darn good. :)

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#92

Post by rbanffy »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #58
rbanffy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was quite sure that would be the case, as Microoft would never allow such an easy way to port Windows apps to other environments. Whatever glue is tied in HTLM/JS environment, it'll run deep into the Windows APIs in such a way no HTML5/JS app will be easily ported to, say, Google's ChromeOS.

Chrome has plenty of its own APIs too.

Sure, but to a lesser degree than for Microsoft, it's not in Google's best interest to have ChromeOS apps ported to other platforms.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#93

Post by DougWebb »

maxxxxx wrote: post #87
DougWebb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Winforms did not replace Win32 and WPF did not replace Winforms. That's the problem.

The older libraries may still be around, but they're not the recommended choice anymore and they don't support everything you can do with the newer libraries. It'll be the same with HTML5 and Windows 8: you'll need to switch to develop apps for the new UI, but old apps will still work.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#94

Post by mdaniel »

yesimahuman wrote: post #70
mathgladiator wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I believe most, if not all, of MSDN now supports user-contributed content alongside the API refs.

Thus, it would serve your fellow developers if you were to annotate the lacking documentation with (1) example code or (2) pointers to the blog postings that you found.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#95

Post by mdaniel »

wmf wrote: post #86
lurker19 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this what the "IE is native" PR claims are about? That HTML DOM and CSS are going to map directly onto the window system instead of a virtual window (or whatever it is called) in the browser engine?

Microsoft earlier explained that "native" means "not cross-platform".

It reminds me of the old joke: Microsoft knows about cross platform code, as some of their stuff runs on WinXP and Vista

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#96

Post by mikemaccana »

wmf wrote: post #86
lurker19 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this what the "IE is native" PR claims are about? That HTML DOM and CSS are going to map directly onto the window system instead of a virtual window (or whatever it is called) in the browser engine?

Microsoft earlier explained that "native" means "not cross-platform".

Er, no, they didn't. They mean fully (or significantly more fully) hardware accelerated, and they've said that many times - hence all the benchmarks of 2D canvas in IE9 vs Chrome.

Personally I think IE9 is a shitty browser - no 3D context for canvasses, gradients, history, or 3D transforms. But you don't need to represent MS to prove that.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#97

Post by teyc »

matwood wrote: post #82
teyc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS has lost a lot of trust when they killed off VFP and then VB6. People with large codebases had to migrate and it means loss of competitive advantage making new code do old things.

People didn't have to migrate though. I know we still have some internal VB6 apps floating around that work fine and do the job they were made to do. Of course they are on the 'upgrade to .net eventually' list, but so far there has been no rush.

Once MS stops development of VB6, the deathclock on its runtime has effectively started. The VB6 runtime may in the future only run on XP emulation. The situation is even more dire with the IDE. The support has effectively run out and if the next release of Windows doesn't support it, you are on your own trying to keep the environment going on an old machine.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#98

Post by teyc »

pornel wrote: post #62
iamelgringo wrote: post #49

Anyone 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.

They can be quite different.

For instance, HP WebOS uses additional attributes to turn DIVs into Buttons.

I've no idea what MS is going to come up with.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#99

Post by teyc »

rbanffy wrote: post #39
teyc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS has lost a lot of trust when they killed off VFP and then VB6. People with large codebases had to migrate and it means loss of competitive advantage making new code do old things.

Most VB6 shops I know took the kool aid and went VB.Net or C#. It would take a whole lot lot of disappointment for them to move away from Microsoft.

Yes for new development, but major projects developed in VB6 still needs to be supported.

Re: Why Microsoft has made developers horrified about coding for Windows 8

#100

Post by Stormbringer »

raganwald wrote: post #59
Stormbringer wrote: post #55

As 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…

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 Do not ignore the possibility that your comment will garner downvotes for talking about being downvoted. Your observations are worth reading. Why bury them underneath meta-commentary that does not add to the discussion?

On general principle I downvote meta discussions about karma/upvotes/whatever shiny beads and shells the site in question is using as faux currency. I wouldn't expect anything different from anyone else.
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