4 ms·

I've been working on a Silverlight app full time for the past 8 months. I was relieved when Microsoft made this announcement (even if they are now trying to bac

by city41 16y ago

I've been working on a Silverlight app full time for the past 8 months. I was relieved when Microsoft made this announcement (even if they are now trying to back track on it a bit). Silverlight isn't bad at all, really. In some ways it's just fantastic. And given another 3 or 4 years or so, it will mature to the point of being a great framework. It's a truly awesome framework for WP7 and if MS can gain some traction behind WP7, having Silverlight in their corner is going to be a boon for them. But right now Silverlight is both mighty raw and almost pointless for webapps. There are so many bugs in Silverlight itself and its related tools that it can make working in Silverlight quite frustrating. When all this time I watch HTML5 blossom and take off and pretty much gain feature parity (and beyond) to Silverlight, I can't help but think to myself as I look at my app, "What's the point?" Nothing is perfect, and of course HTML5 is going to have its warts, especially when dealing with every vendor's own implementation of JS and the new HTML5 components. But at least with this route you're swimming with the current and not against it. There's a lot to be said for that.

Encosia 16y ago
> But at least with this route you're swimming with the current and not against it. There's a lot to be said for that. Exactly. It's disappointing how much time and effort has been squandered on various abstractions primarily popularized because they gave developers excuses to avoid learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. When it comes to Silverlight, it's easy to see how so many devs were tempted to unnecessarily overuse it. Microsoft's PR efforts are often panned, but the Silverlight hype machine was incredibly persuasive. I even questioned my own focus on standards-based development[1] for a few brief moments during conferences like MIX. [1] http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new-webforms/ http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new-webform...

by city41 16y ago

Encosia 16y ago

> But at least with this route you're swimming with the current and not against it. There's a lot to be said for that. Exactly. It's disappointing how much time and effort has been squandered on various abstractions primarily popularized because they gave developers excuses to avoid learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. When it comes to Silverlight, it's easy to see how so many devs were tempted to unnecessarily overuse it. Microsoft's PR efforts are often panned, but the Silverlight hype machine was incredibly persuasive. I even questioned my own focus on standards-based development[1] for a few brief moments during conferences like MIX. [1] http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new-webforms/ http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new-webform...