2 ms·

I don't think we'll ever see Win32 retired. .NET and UWP aren't distinct subsystems; they run atop Win32.

WorldMaker 8y ago
Sure, there will always be legacy Win32 apps. I work with too many VB6 applications to be more optimistic about that. UWP is closer to being a distinct subsystem than "running atop Win32". Though it isn't an official subsystem, it has some of the hallmarks of one (and that was one of the complaints about Windows 8). They've been successfully blurring the lines between UWP and Win32 since Windows 8, but it's also not entirely accurate to state that UWP "runs atop Win32". (The old .NET Framework does, yes, but I didn't mention the .NET Framework, I mentioned UWP.) If anything, with increasingly more of the Windows Shell moving to UWP, it may even start to be increasingly the case that it is Win32 running atop UWP.
- dblohm7 8y ago
  COM is dependent on Win32, and UWP is based on COM.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    COM itself is quite small, sure there are a lot of components that implement COM and use Win32 but I don't think it would take much to port COM itself to another platform.
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      COM itself as a format/standard is Win32 agnostic other than being built on some similar data structures to Win32. Also, WinRT isn't COM. It's very like COM, "son of COM and .NET metadata" and all that, but WinRT and all the WinRT components don't use Win32 and never have, and even have a quite clean break with all of the Win32 data structures COM has embedded in the past. (Though, I suppose some of that starts to get into the semantic weeds of whether or not you consider DirectX a part of "Win32" or not, as for instance XAML is built on DirectX and much of DirectX is provided as WinRT components, sort of. There are certainly a lot of Win32-adjacent things that live in all worlds like DirectX, but whether or not they can be considered Win32 is an interesting philosophical debate.)
    - dblohm7 8y ago
      It doesn't just use the COM ABI et al. It also uses the distributed bits.

Sure, there will always be legacy Win32 apps. I work with too many VB6 applications to be more optimistic about that. UWP is closer to being a distinct subsystem than "running atop Win32". Though it isn't an official subsystem, it has some of the hallmarks of one (and that was one of the complaints about Windows 8). They've been successfully blurring the lines between UWP and Win32 since Windows 8, but it's also not entirely accurate to state that UWP "runs atop Win32". (The old .NET Framework does, yes, but I didn't mention the .NET Framework, I mentioned UWP.) If anything, with increasingly more of the Windows Shell moving to UWP, it may even start to be increasingly the case that it is Win32 running atop UWP.

dblohm7 8y ago
COM is dependent on Win32, and UWP is based on COM.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  COM itself is quite small, sure there are a lot of components that implement COM and use Win32 but I don't think it would take much to port COM itself to another platform.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    COM itself as a format/standard is Win32 agnostic other than being built on some similar data structures to Win32. Also, WinRT isn't COM. It's very like COM, "son of COM and .NET metadata" and all that, but WinRT and all the WinRT components don't use Win32 and never have, and even have a quite clean break with all of the Win32 data structures COM has embedded in the past. (Though, I suppose some of that starts to get into the semantic weeds of whether or not you consider DirectX a part of "Win32" or not, as for instance XAML is built on DirectX and much of DirectX is provided as WinRT components, sort of. There are certainly a lot of Win32-adjacent things that live in all worlds like DirectX, but whether or not they can be considered Win32 is an interesting philosophical debate.)
  - dblohm7 8y ago
    It doesn't just use the COM ABI et al. It also uses the distributed bits.