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Windows Forms was released on 2002 and is still supported by Microsoft. How long do you think Flutter will be supported by Google? For dev technology, Microsoft

Windows Forms was released on 2002 and is still supported by Microsoft. How long do you think Flutter will be supported by Google? For dev technology, Microsoft has a well-deserved reputation for supporting products for a long time.

int_19h 7y ago
It... depends. Remember Silverlight?
- unsignedint 7y ago
  The last version of Silverlight, Silverlight 5 is actually supported until next year, 10 years after the initial 5.x release, which is not really "short" by any standard. It's mostly the browser's ecosystem moved away from these for more standard based approaches.
  - int_19h 7y ago
    "Supported" in a sense of patching security holes, sure. Not so much in a sense of writing new apps in it, or using modern tools to maintain old apps (support was dropped in VS 2017). So in that regard it's very unlike MFC or WinForms, which both enjoy continuous tooling support, and fixes and minor enhancements outside of security. FWIW, I think your criticism is broadly valid, in that it's more of an exception for Microsoft, but much more common for Google. It's not hard to look at the Windows dev ecosystem, and see which parts of it are very stable, and likely to be around long term - because they have already been around for very long indeed.
    - unsignedint 7y ago
      I think the difference between MFC and WinForms, compared to Silverlight is that former are still widely used. albeit less than in the past with a lot more prevalence of web based applications. Silverlight in other hand is a technology no modern web browsers support (in the same camp with gradually deprecated Flash and everything that requires plugins.), and perhaps to Microsoft it's a lot less justifiable to update it beyond security update.
- dragonshed 7y ago
  Ahh, the good ol days. I lost count of how many Xaml-based UI Frameworks got released. In 2011 I started learning web development for UI, almost immediately after Microsoft announced Windows 8 and WinRT at build. This graphic [0] was the writing on the wall. [0] https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155521/what-is-the-difference-between-windows-8-winrt-and-windows-rt/155522#155522 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1555...
  - int_19h 7y ago
    To be fair, not all of them were like that. E.g. WPF is very similar to WinForms, in that it doesn't see any major new features, but there's constant ongoing maintenance (including fairly big items, such as getting it to run on .NET Core), and all the development tooling is fully supported as well.
filleduchaos 7y ago
> How long do you think Flutter will be supported by Google? I am curious about how often this sentiment gets brought up about Go or Kubernetes.
- bsaul 7y ago
  Go and kubernetes clearly have reached a critical user mass that makes one confident other companies will maintain it even if for some reason google abandons ship. flutter on the other hand is tremendously complex, and has yet to display any major company having bet their future on it.
- inapis 7y ago
  At least Kubernetes won’t be in trouble since its no longer under the aegis of Google. CNCF is now the maintainer.
- wolco 7y ago
  Go can easily within a year fade away to be replaced with something else. Remember MongoDB?
  - benbristow 7y ago
    MongoDB still seems to be around and kicking?
    - wolco 7y ago
      I'm still a MongoDB cerificated developer. The popularity has dropped as with the amount of positions available. There may come a time when this applies to Go.
      - decafninja 7y ago
        I'm curious, what seems to be the Next Big Thing that is superceding MongoDB?

int_19h 7y ago

It... depends. Remember Silverlight?

unsignedint 7y ago
The last version of Silverlight, Silverlight 5 is actually supported until next year, 10 years after the initial 5.x release, which is not really "short" by any standard. It's mostly the browser's ecosystem moved away from these for more standard based approaches.
- int_19h 7y ago
  "Supported" in a sense of patching security holes, sure. Not so much in a sense of writing new apps in it, or using modern tools to maintain old apps (support was dropped in VS 2017). So in that regard it's very unlike MFC or WinForms, which both enjoy continuous tooling support, and fixes and minor enhancements outside of security. FWIW, I think your criticism is broadly valid, in that it's more of an exception for Microsoft, but much more common for Google. It's not hard to look at the Windows dev ecosystem, and see which parts of it are very stable, and likely to be around long term - because they have already been around for very long indeed.
  - unsignedint 7y ago
    I think the difference between MFC and WinForms, compared to Silverlight is that former are still widely used. albeit less than in the past with a lot more prevalence of web based applications. Silverlight in other hand is a technology no modern web browsers support (in the same camp with gradually deprecated Flash and everything that requires plugins.), and perhaps to Microsoft it's a lot less justifiable to update it beyond security update.
dragonshed 7y ago
Ahh, the good ol days. I lost count of how many Xaml-based UI Frameworks got released. In 2011 I started learning web development for UI, almost immediately after Microsoft announced Windows 8 and WinRT at build. This graphic [0] was the writing on the wall. [0] https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/155521/what-is-the-difference-between-windows-8-winrt-and-windows-rt/155522#155522 https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1555...
- int_19h 7y ago
  To be fair, not all of them were like that. E.g. WPF is very similar to WinForms, in that it doesn't see any major new features, but there's constant ongoing maintenance (including fairly big items, such as getting it to run on .NET Core), and all the development tooling is fully supported as well.

filleduchaos 7y ago

> How long do you think Flutter will be supported by Google? I am curious about how often this sentiment gets brought up about Go or Kubernetes.

bsaul 7y ago
Go and kubernetes clearly have reached a critical user mass that makes one confident other companies will maintain it even if for some reason google abandons ship. flutter on the other hand is tremendously complex, and has yet to display any major company having bet their future on it.
inapis 7y ago
At least Kubernetes won’t be in trouble since its no longer under the aegis of Google. CNCF is now the maintainer.
wolco 7y ago
Go can easily within a year fade away to be replaced with something else. Remember MongoDB?
- benbristow 7y ago
  MongoDB still seems to be around and kicking?
  - wolco 7y ago
    I'm still a MongoDB cerificated developer. The popularity has dropped as with the amount of positions available. There may come a time when this applies to Go.
    - decafninja 7y ago
      I'm curious, what seems to be the Next Big Thing that is superceding MongoDB?