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Microsoft refuses to comment as .NET developers fret about Windows 8

133 points by bensummers 15y ago

bad_user 15y ago
*We put up with Windows so we can use C#, F# and VS2010* It's not like you won't be able to use .NET - they are just adding IE9 into the equation, so I don't understand what this "fret" is about. This is what happens when developers believe blindly in promises, instead of focusing on getting the job done with minimal friction. Of course Microsoft was going to let go of the .NET "vision" at some point, as .NET is not applicable to everything. If you believed that by learning .NET you are going to have a unified platform to be able to use it for everything, that's your problem. It's like believing .NET's CLR is a general-purpose VM. Well, it ain't. Yes it provides some flexibility, but you'll never have Haskell on it. Or a reasonable LUA implementation for that matter. And in my view, basing this new UI on IE9 and Javascript/HTML is a move in the right direction for Microsoft, one of the few I've seen in years - I mean, why reinvent the wheel instead of leveraging the knowledge of lots of outside developers? Last time I checked, even Adobe AIR had better penetration than Silverlight (total, not counting the number of out-of-browser Silverlight apps or people that use such apps).
- rbanffy 15y ago
  > This is what happens when developers believe blindly in promises, Actually, this is what happens when you rely on software someone else controls. I once worked in a company that (after I left) made a huge investment in WebClasses, as they "were the future" of web development on Microsoft platforms. "The Future", as often happens, didn't last long. Microsoft hasn't clearly ditched neither .NET (and .NET permeates most of Microsoft's server business) nor Silverlight and the "classic" view will still be there for when it makes sense (and it really does in a lot of scenarios). I suspect, however, "modern" apps will prefer to use the cleaner tile interface. If things like Gmail and Google Docs taught us something, is that simple interfaces are a good idea. With the onslaught of fresh desktop GUI ideas like Apple's full-screen apps, Gnome's new shell, and Canonical's Unity, Microsoft had to show something. And that's what damns them. When a competitor, any competitor, shows something, they make themselves show something like it. Frankly, this whole tile thing has "PDC 2003" written all over it.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    this is what happens when you rely on software someone else controls True, but you invariably depend on somebody else to write the software you want. For the web, you depend on the industry to evolve towards your specific needs. Client-side, you depend on whichever company controls the operating-system of the devices you're trying to target. I wanted to mention open-source platforms when writing that comment, but in this specific context it isn't really useful, since that's not what .NET developers seek. They want Windows, Visual Studio, commercial support and a unified platform for the web, client and mobile (the promise of .NET), which is insane as there can be no such thing.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      > True, but you invariably depend on somebody else to write the software you want. Not really. When Zope Corporation ceased to develop Zope 2 in favor of Zope 3, the Plone community and others continued development of the 2 series. It currently has a lot of features migrated from the 3 series, a lot of new features of its own, but remains compatible with the Plone CMS that runs on its top. If, for whatever implausible reason, Oracle decides to ditch MySQL, its users already have a bunch of forks in place, perfectly functional. If, however, Oracle decides to discontinue their RDBMS, its users are royally screwed. > and a unified platform for the web, client and mobile (the promise of .NET), which is insane as there can be no such thing. Despite my dislike for Java (the language), I have to recognize it spans a very vast space, from dumbphones (J2ME) to fairly clever ones (CLDC, CDC) to very smart ones (Android) to desktops (Eclipse, NetBeans, several standalone development tools I use) to large distributed server solutions (Cassandra, Mule, Hadoop). And the JVM is sweet. I'd love to find a decent excuse to do something in Clojure on it.
- matwood 15y ago
  It's not like you won't be able to use .NET - they are just adding IE9 into the equation Exactly. I write a lot of .net code for work and haven't written a UI in anything other than HTML/JS in a long time. Too many people seem to be reading HTML/JS and thinking entire apps will now have to be written in them, and I just don't that's true.
  - bladerunner 15y ago
    Exactly. There's no way that everybody is going to write entire apps in craptastic html/css/js.
- dfj225 15y ago
  > I don't understand what this "fret" is about. My perception is that they are worried that their existing knowledge (in .NET or any other MS dev tech) will not allow them to create applications for this new touch interface. Instead, they will be forced to use a new technology if they want to create an app for the new Windows 8 interface.
  - TomOfTTB 15y ago
    You're partially right. But I'd draw your attention to this part of the article... "Underlying the discussion is that developers have clients, and clients want applications that run on a platform with a future. Currently, Microsoft is promoting HTML and JavaScript as the future for Windows applications, putting every client-side .NET developer at a disadvantage in those pitches." Remember most MS developers work in corporate environments. Either in companies or as consultants. No one wants to spend money to build a "legacy" app. So when Microsoft says HTML5 apps are the future but doesn't lay out how their APIs are going to work it freezes many .NET developers in their tracks. Because now Silverlight and WPF are legacy but you don't know how to pitch these new Windows 8 apps to a client because Microsoft hasn't specified how they'll work.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    I get the impression some developers really dislike learning new things.
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      I don't think it's learning new things per se. The main thing is they don't like the technology stack and the dev tools.
      - rbanffy 15y ago
        Most of the time, the criticism comes before the first contact with the technology being criticized. For instance, most of the people who criticize Smalltalk's "alien" syntax never finished a single tutorial.
Animus7 15y ago
Microsoft's biggest problem is how fractured this new consumer-centric approach is inevitably going to feel for everyone, though devs are probably going to be hit the most, and that spells trouble. The problem is that Windows has a slew of legacy API's, languages, and frameworks that you can't get rid of without undermining the existing application ecosystem that made it popular. And it seems like they're not willing to get rid of any of that for the new world of web/mobile apps, like Apple did with flying colors. Instead they're shoehorning yet another framework onto an already bloated platform. So in the end they're trying to apply a lesson from Apple (touch, interactivity) with total disregard for why it worked (simplicity, seamlessness, usability). A recipe for failure if I ever saw one. Ballmer still doesn't get why iPhone won the mobile wars.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  The iPhone hardly won the mobile wars with Android gaining that much market share (and even in some measurements, exceeding it) - it is a little like saying that the British have won the war of independence because they have the rebels holed up in a fort.
  - bonch 15y ago
    You're comparing a single phone to an entire operating system platform. If you include iPod touches and iPads, iOS's install base exceeds Android's.
  - Animus7 15y ago
    By iPhone, I mean the concept, not the brand. And iPhone clearly paved the way for Android.
    - tomjen3 15y ago
      Okay, that I will buy.
  - ThomPete 15y ago
    That depends on what you are measuring. In my world Apple is the leader because they have the best business. If you only look at market share then nokia should have been the winner for a long time.
lini 15y ago
What's to stop you from putting a Silverlight APP in the tiled interface? Silverlight runs OK now in HTML pages so in theory it should work in the HTML + JS Win8 box as well :)
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  I think what is more troubling is that Microsoft has apparently signaled a major shift in the preferred way to develop programs for the Windows platform and simultaneously refused to address the implications for developers, asking them to wait for further announcements in September. That's a recipe for fear, uncertainty and doubt within the tribe itself. Put another way: it's hard to reconcile "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!" with "We're changing things radically concerning the way you develop, but we won't tell you how-- hold tight until September, 'mmm-kay?" EDIT: formatting
  - bruceboughton 15y ago
    At this point Microsoft is just pre-empting Apple announcements at WWDC. It's all hubris until they deliver something more concrete. There will be internal debate about HTML5/JS vs .NET, and their choice of strategic platform has changed enough times in the last few years to make me take this announcement with a pinch of salt. I'm not worried until they shut up and ship.
  - xradionut 15y ago
    There's a huge number of business developers this won't affect. .NET and "normal" desktop, web and server apps are still the bread and butter for these folks. Not everyone is on the bleeding edge.
    - teyc 15y ago
      There is a turf war at the moment between MS, Apple and Goog. Developers take time to tool up and skill up, and amidst all the gunsmoke and fog of war, we all have to decide who to pledge our allegiance to. By not mentioning Silverlight or WPF, MS is effectively switching sides from developers who have invested in exclusively MS tech to those who are far less partisan, and it hurts.
robgough 15y ago
As a .NET developer, I'm not in any way worried that they're going to replace the .NET framework as their primary enterprise platform, with javascript. For this tile UI, I'm a little surprised - if only because it's quite different from how WinPhone7 works (isn't it?).
- keyle 15y ago
  Let's face it. Thinking that WPF/C# can be replaced by HTML/JS is foolish at best. The html apps will be the widgetty type applications, while the real working computing applications will be written in solid .NET. My only concern is this integration of one into the other that they show. It looks like slapping a pig on top of a cow and asking for babies.
  - robgough 15y ago
    I would have preferred if they had somehow integrated/replaced the system tray functionality with that of the tiling interface... as my understanding the tiles can mimic most of this functionality, if not do a little more. I dare say most the concern I'm seeing about this so far is that they've simply not gone far enough... Unless the tiling interface is the primary mode of use, then most people simply won't use it and it'll be relegated to the list of features the OS has, that simply no one uses. Think "Windows SideShow". Of course, this all depends on what MS are planning on doing - and I think they've made yet another PR misstep (even if it's only to developers) in that they've simply not released enough information. I can't decide if they're teasing deliberately in an attempt to drum up interest (working, but I would argue that it's more worry than interest to their target demographic) or whether they actually don't have much more than this demo and that they don't know what their long term plans are (even more worrying?)
    - kenjackson 15y ago
      I dare say most the concern I'm seeing about this so far is that they've simply not gone far enough... Unless the tiling interface is the primary mode of use, then most people simply won't use it and it'll be relegated to the list of features the OS has, that simply no one uses. I think their intent is that this new UI is the Windows UI. I think they're going to push devs to use this new UI for all apps unless they need to go to the old UI. Recall that native apps will not be cross platform, so there's motivation for devs to target this new UI to run on x86 and all the ARM variants.
Andrex 15y ago
Last time Silverlight was in the headlines it was because, surprise, MS was pushing HTML5/JS over it. Same deal here, I can't say I'm too shocked this time. Although now their API situation is more of a mess, with normal native APIs plus HTML5 for Windows now, then there's Silverlight for Windows Phone 7. Makes you wonder if they didn't have any foresight about this decision when choosing WP7's set of APIs.
JonoW 15y ago
As a .NET dev, I'm not worried, MS has invested really heavily into .NET, it's everywhere in their eco-system now. Even if the preferred way to build some desktop apps was HTML/JS, .NET is still going to be in use in many other places. Even if they did ditch .NET (which I don't think they will), it would take years to do; plenty of time to move to something else ;)
- rbanffy 15y ago
  Keep in mind those HTML/JS apps will probably have hooks into .NET libraries installed on the system. And I bet that HTML will still be compatible with ActiveX.
leon_ 15y ago
That shows the risks of vendor lock in. Although I don't believe MS will replace .NET with html5/js in any regard it shows pretty good why you shouldn't commit too much to vendor specific/centric technologies.
- JonoW 15y ago
  Based on that logic no one should be building iPhone or iPad apps. You have to commit to something at some point. The odds of a company ditching a product they have invested hugely into is probably the same as the odds of an open technology or framework simply becoming unpopular.
  - jcromartie 15y ago
    You can commit to something, for a time, without pushing everything else out of your brain. I spent quite some time doing iOS development, and it would certainly not be the end of the world if the entire toolchain changed tomorrow.
pilif 15y ago
I don't know. From that demo, I really doubt that the tiled interface will ever provide enough functionality for these apps to be really useful or as full-featured as their real desktop counterparts. I see this tile-thingy more as an additional overview-shell, but the real work will remain to be done in the classic apps. This is more comparable to the Mac Dashboard widgets than to a complete UI redesign. As such, I see no problem in doing these widgets in HTML/JS which is what we have used ever since. The "real" applications will still be done in whatever technology is available under windows. Of course, everything is just speculation. I just know that I'm sure as hell never going to use a touch interface on my desktop PC nor drag around tiles with the mouse trying to fake enough inertia to get the scrolling to go.
- thom 15y ago
  I think the comparison to the Mac Dashboard is a very good one. With the introduction of SideShow in Vista, Microsoft showed an interest in simple at-a-glance apps, and it seems like they want to push that interaction model for 'tablet mode', while still leaving everything in place for 'desktop mode'.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    I would think more on the lines of a cross between Dashboard widgets and full-screen apps.
- illumin8 15y ago
  I think you are onto something here. I think the tiled interface will be very similar to the Windows Media Center shell. It's a specialized interface for touch, just like WMC is a specialized interface for couch surfing. In the end it's not going to be very useful for end users unless Microsoft really bites the bullet and forces developers to migrate to the tiled interface, en mass. Apple did that with iOS, basically forcing developers to create entirely new apps, because the input method of touch was so drastically different that apps requiring mouse-level precision would never work. Microsoft will never do that, so instead they need to fragment their OS into two interfaces, touch and classic. I fear a Windows 8 tablet will be the worst of both worlds. It will need enough horsepower to run "classic mode" with all of the baggage that brings, yet most tablet users are just doing simple media consumption so they can stay in tiled mode most of the time. In the end you bring a product to market that costs $1500, has a quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM, and gets 4 hours of battery life - not to mention it weighs 3 pounds. Basically you end up with the current crop of Windows tablets. A stylus will probably be included just to make classic mode usable. I'm not saying there isn't a market for a powerful tablet that can run Windows 8 in classic mode, but those tablets have been around for years and they haven't gotten mass market traction for a reason.
thedigitalengel 15y ago
We should have something like GWT that compiles .NET to whatever Microsoft thinks developers should use.
- tianyicui 15y ago
  For HTML5, we already have one: http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html
  - gte525u 15y ago
    That's not exactly a fully supported toolset. There is another C# to js compiler http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp which is AFAICT another side project. If one of these were to stick - it would first need to be supported be a somewhat larger organization (ala apache foundation for java components, or google for GWT/Closure).
  - junkyarddog 15y ago
    For the F# developer, WebSharper ( http://websharper.com/ http://websharper.com/ ) seems to offer a great implementation based on the Formlets abstraction. For some theoretical background, have a look at http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/links/formlets/ http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/links/formlets/ which has some articles describing the Form abstraction by Philip Wadler, et al.
- jimbobimbo 15y ago
  The fun thing is that there WAS something from Microsoft themselves, called Volta. I've never heard anything about this project for 2-3 years already. RIP, I suppose.
felixmar 15y ago
The problem with WPF/Silverlight is that Microsoft never managed to make it feel fast enough to compete with native code. The Windows Phone 7 UI is praised because of its excellent performance. Now imagine that Microsoft would have used WPF instead. Because of the Silverlight requirement it's impossible for third party app developers to reach same level of performance as build-in services. I would like to see a new UI framework that everyone inside Microsoft feels is good enough to use. And give third parties equal access.
- chrisjsmith 15y ago
  Agreed. Visual Studio 2010 is testament to your comment.
  - keyle 15y ago
    I've got a i7 8gig of ram and SSD and VS2010 runs like a complete pig on a year old project. It's unbelievably bad. Each time I report problems, they close them saying 'cannot reproduce'. So if that's the case, why do people upvote my issues?
    - chrisjsmith 15y ago
      Same trouble here. My (work) workstation is a Dual Xeon, 12Gb RAM, SAS 15k disks (to replace the crap SSDs Dell shipped with the machines). We have (using CLOC) about 250K lines of C# (!). MVC3/NHibernate etc. Takes FOREVER to compile and run (3-4 minutes per change). Resharper is unusable. Crashes every 30 mins or so. Using SP1. I get the same with Microsoft Connect as well. It's a disaster zone. I hate working with the stack.
      - jimbobimbo 15y ago
        I would start with removing Resharper first. While I understand why people like having it around, I've seen it degrading performance of otherwise perfectly capable setup on the same solution which flies on a similar setup without Resharper.
chrisjsmith 15y ago
I don't see what the problem is. It's a logical step and it's better for the mind than filling it up with .Net APIs. I think the most vitriolic responses have been from people who have either been brainwashed by WebForms or never had to do anything on the web before.
sradnidge 15y ago
I love the first comment in the original thread, specifically: >“Microsoft has first class cross-platform application framework called Silverlight and they want us to right freaking javascript.” Yeh, because js isn't a first class, cross platform language...
- thomasz 15y ago
  To be fair, it should be a lot less expansive to get a complex UI running for 90% of a typical user base with silverlight, provided that your business model allows you to ignore the fsf crowd. In the context of those touchy-feely applications for windows 8, it is a hysterically stupid move to force developers into the web stack, and then tell them to go fuck themselves and port the whole shit to Silverlight for WP7 devices. It is really less "cross platform", considered what platforms those devs care about. I can think of very few reasons for this idiocy besides relations between OS and devtools devision having quietly deteriorated from post WWII style peace to nuclear war.
- eropple 15y ago
  The platforms that I, when doing .NET development, care about are: -Windows -Windows Phone -Xbox 360 (for games) And maybe Linux if I'm feeling really charitable and want to make my stuff Mono-compatible. JavaScript is not a first-class language on at least two of those platforms. It's not a cross-platform application development language on three of them.
brudgers 15y ago
The idea that Microsoft is going to go the IOS route is so completely contrary to the interests of their primary customer bases - business and enterprise - that it is only the constant call of the techpress for Microsoft to be more like Google or Apple which gives the idea credence. Windows has had HTML and script based Apps in the form of HTA's for a long time (i.e. IE5). So in many ways the buzz seems more of a marketing coup than a revolutionary new approach (aimed at getting consumers to enable scripting on desktop installations). I suspect Silverlight to be deprecated as a web technology because it has many of the same issues as Flash (for which it was always intended as an alternative/replacement), but .NET is here to stay. It is .NET that facilitates the expanding ability of Windows to run on diverse architectures - since Windows Vista the Windows OS is essentially .NET for many purposes and Windows 8 and WP7 are extensions of that roadmap. A roadmap which, again, is business focused and tailored to provide stability. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496%28v=vs.85%29.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496%28v=vs.85%2... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application http://support.microsoft.com/kb/200874 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/200874
- jimbobimbo 15y ago
  Windows had never made it into "essentially .NET". Longhorn was going to be the first one, but it was scraped and Vista is essentially Win32/Win64 APIs with pre-installed .NET framework. I doubt there's anything in Windows client that is written in .NET - server is a different story though.
  - brudgers 15y ago
    I did not say that Windows was written in .NET. The parent comment was "essentially .NET for many purposes." Among those purposes would be development of applications and system automation.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    Windows Media Center is written in .NET.
jcromartie 15y ago
I don't feel sorry for anybody who invests everything in a single platform. That is a simple recipe for quickly becoming obsolete.
rbanffy 15y ago
I can only imagine the turf wars raging right now about this apparent dichotomy between classic and tiled. I assume my friends there are not having a very happy day.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Anyone who has worked enterprise in the eastern half of the U.S. knows better than to be worried by this. There are so many mission-critical business applications written in C#, and even VB.net, that the idea of .NET jobs going away in the next 15 years, even if MS were to abandon the product today, is nil. Where I live I would guess that at least 90% of job postings for programmers are .NET.
- pnathan 15y ago
  It's sort of like COBOL. =)
  - bladerunner 15y ago
    Yes, Javascript is sortof like COBOL
- ern 15y ago
  How many of these mission critical business systems are written with WPF or Silverlight for the native front-end? I don't know the numbers, but my guess is that the bulk would still be Winforms. I think a lot of people who develop desktop front ends for .NET (and want to develop on new projects) would have put effort into learning Silverlight and/or WPF and are afraid that the effort is going to be wasted, as they need to learn another technology.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    What exactly does learning Silverlight entail that differs from learning any other .NET environment? XAML is just an xml markup. I only used it on a WP7 app and it took me a couple of hours to get the gist of how it works.
    - luffy 15y ago
      Not much really, especially if you limit the XAML to basic layouts. If you do everything in C#, it's not too much different from something like, say, WinForms. Which is why people like it.
powertower 15y ago
All this fear is coming from weak-knee programmers and people who love to bask in FUD. You don't build applications with logic and complicated function out of HTML and JS. Not today, not tomorrow. My (and your) 10k, 100k, 200k line C# applications are not writable in JS. Sure, there is GMail and Node.JS as examples. But thats kind of a niche compared to everything else. HTML and JS are just going to be another way do to UI, and nothing else. You'll still need to write the C# app and use .NET to do the backend. HTML/JS will be another option right along with XAML/WPF and SilverLight.
- nkassis 15y ago
  "My (and your) 10k, 100k, 200k line C# applications are not writable in JS." I don't know that this will be true for very much longer, if it's not already been disproven. Javascript isn't the greatest language out there but it's gain functionality that is removing the limitations that uses to plague it compared to other languages. Slow VM is not longer true, no multithreading is not longer true. Webworkes are a little odd for sure, but they still make it possible to build multithreaded applications. WebGL/Canvas allow for some very advanced graphical applications. You can now access local storage, a database (and in node, other databases), new ArrayBuffers and such. It's a different environment now.
  - powertower 15y ago
    > I don't know that this will be true for very much longer, if it's not already been disproven. Please show me examples of these 50k+ line JS applications that have no backend, or run JS on the backend, that are not a mess. ...That you can develop, debug, and tie in with the rest of the system with the same ease (or even 10% of ease) as you can with native .NET apps.
    - nkassis 15y ago
      I can't point to any (GMail client side code must be pretty big), but I do have a 5K one that I work on daily and it's not a mess. This project is still very much in development and will grow with time. It's not 50k and it's for sure not a project with 20 devs but even this size was unthinkable earlier. I'm working on a backend in node to take advantage of Websockets.
swix 15y ago
.NET bleh. HTML5 is the future, cross platform. JavaScript will be made into a robust language in the coming years, with classes, etc. The crappy DOM will probably change for the better, HTML5 apps will run as local apps and tap into the native APIs of the system. Client = HTML5 + JS , yes we dont need .NET here, where .NET/C/C# and others will be used, will be in the backend, frontend/client can be perfectly made with HTML5 + JS. The only exception is perhaps games and apps such as Photoshop, but 90% of enterprise stuff that is simply thin clients speaking to a big backend database+etc can be perfectly made with HTML5. HTML5 is here to stay, .NET will be the exception. (Games/Heavy backend/3D apps/Photoshop) sort of things... nothing more. Or who knows, maybe in the future with WebGL and what not even some more complicated games can be made just with HTML5.
- crag 15y ago
  I agree with all of this. BUT it'll take a while to get there. .NET will be around for a long time in the backend.
- bonch 15y ago
  > HTML5 is the future, cross platform. JavaScript will be made into a robust language in the coming years, with classes, etc. People have been claiming HTML and Javascript were the future of application development for about 15 years now. They also claimed it about Java and, ironically, .NET.
vyrotek 15y ago
It seems kind of odd that Microsoft would be all in with Azure and then drop the .Net framework.
jwwest 15y ago
Windows developers have a bad reputation for being fixated on one or two programming languages and tools at the expense of learning other platforms. Can't say I would feel sorry for them if any of this were to be true. There's something to be said about breadth versus depth.
- ern 15y ago
  Windows developers have a bad reputation for being fixated on one or two programming languages and tools at the expense of learning other platforms. Can't say I would feel sorry for them if any of this were to be true. This is an unfortunate, and valid criticism. I've worked with senior C# and VB developers who hadn't encountered the concept of an (OO) interface, but they got along just fine with their day-to-day jobs, copy-pasting. However, I do feel sympathy for them - they were so insulated from the wider programming and CS communities, that they didn't even realize there were other things happening in the wider dev world. Their fault was one of ignorance, not arrogance (and of believing everything Microsoft told them at the developer events they attended).
evo_9 15y ago
I think the bigger issue here is how Microsoft is handling the dissemination of coming changes. Why on earth say nothing except 'please wait until september'. Between now and September I could learn object-c and move to another platform. Just a really unwise approach. At the minimum they should be saying, '...your investment in the Microsoft stack will not be lost, C#, F# and VisualStudio are important technologies that we are committed too...'. So here we are left to speculate as to what happens next. I can't believe they would simply toss all the technology out - what's the alternative for true native apps, pure C++? As far as the HTML5/Javascript thing goes - hell yeah, I switched to using html(4/5)/javascript and css(2/3) for my front-end code over a year ago. I think this is actually a pretty shrewd move and likely will be more a focus for the tablet and phone developer side allowing easier porting across all the emerging platforms. The fact that I may be able to use that same tech for Windows desktop apps is nice bonus, but like we all saw on iOS - nothing beats native for the best client experience, at least for now.
thepumpkin1979 15y ago
This is a market strategy. Microsoft knows desktop apps, WPF, Silverlight are losing the battle against HTML5/CSS/JS based apps, the most obvious movement Microsoft could have done is create a 2 minute video of their next OS and say "hey Web Developers, you can use your web skills here too". Also, this video says nothing about the architecture behind this "Launcher"(because that what it looks like), there are a lot of possibilities. May be IE10 has some kind of <protected-frame> element so you can specify certain permissions like network access, file system access and stuff, maybe it requires a manifest in which you can specify what "DOM manipulation technology" do you want to use, the most obvious options are: - A Javascript (IE9 code-name "Chakra" engine) based file. - A JScript.NET file. - Any DLR based language file. - Any .NET assembly decorated with some fashion attributes like <Windows8Launcher.TileDomBehindAttribute(typeof(MyTileHandler))> or something which you can easily compile with any .NET compiler like C#, VB.NET, C++ CLI, etc. May be developing in HTML is completely optional and each Tile can be developed using Silverlight or Windows Presentation Foundation technologies... we don't know. We know that Microsoft is a legacy company, they will not abandon .NET anytime soon.
ngranado 15y ago
you should be able to get all of the .net specific stuff you want via jscript what is the big deal here?
emp_ 15y ago
The web-based API looks like the Active Channels 2ND attempt, there's nothing like history to get a glimpse of the future. [1] [1]: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768176.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768176.aspx
fleitz 15y ago
.NET is not going away anytime soon. If anything I feel this further deprecates silverlight. There is no way that MS expects the majority of apps to be written in HTML+JS, it's just an option to make it easy for those used to HTML+JS to write apps on the platform, in the same vein as writing an HTML+JS app for iPhone. Most serious Windows applications are written in C++ for Win32 anyway, VS which is becoming more and more .NET everyday still has heavy roots in COM/Win32. Office integration is still best done in C++. No these apps aren't whats fueling the consumer web but they make big bucks for the vendors who write them, and ensure platform lockin to Windows as MS tries to transition away from their desktop monopoly. MS is not stupid enough to pull another Vista and make apps that used to work not work. Even if MS were very serious about transitioning everything to HTML+JS you'd be looking at a 10-15 year timeline. The day you see Office written in HTML+JS is the day to start worrying if you're a Win32 / .NET app developer.
charlieflowers 15y ago
Microsoft seems to have lost all sense of direction. I just see them launching a bunch of superficially considered me-too initiatives instead of anything meaty. They still are the gorilla, but it almost looks like they've given up. Is it just me?
contextfree 15y ago
fwiw, there are apparently a fair number of newly added .NET-related dlls and stuff in the leaked Win8 alpha builds.
Gidion 15y ago
This does remind me of the "no-native-.NET-support" Windows Sidebar attempt. It failed in the end, but even there one of the first things we did was find a way to host .NET elements in the sidebar (and it was possible, but you had to jump through many hoops). We will have to wait and see, but I can't imagine there will not be a way to host Silverlight in one of the tiles. Also this whole "every app is going to be html + javascript" does remind me of the earlies Apple IPhone developer offerings.

133 points by bensummers 15y ago

*We put up with Windows so we can use C#, F# and VS2010* It's not like you won't be able to use .NET - they are just adding IE9 into the equation, so I don't understand what this "fret" is about. This is what happens when developers believe blindly in promises, instead of focusing on getting the job done with minimal friction. Of course Microsoft was going to let go of the .NET "vision" at some point, as .NET is not applicable to everything. If you believed that by learning .NET you are going to have a unified platform to be able to use it for everything, that's your problem. It's like believing .NET's CLR is a general-purpose VM. Well, it ain't. Yes it provides some flexibility, but you'll never have Haskell on it. Or a reasonable LUA implementation for that matter. And in my view, basing this new UI on IE9 and Javascript/HTML is a move in the right direction for Microsoft, one of the few I've seen in years - I mean, why reinvent the wheel instead of leveraging the knowledge of lots of outside developers? Last time I checked, even Adobe AIR had better penetration than Silverlight (total, not counting the number of out-of-browser Silverlight apps or people that use such apps).

rbanffy 15y ago
> This is what happens when developers believe blindly in promises, Actually, this is what happens when you rely on software someone else controls. I once worked in a company that (after I left) made a huge investment in WebClasses, as they "were the future" of web development on Microsoft platforms. "The Future", as often happens, didn't last long. Microsoft hasn't clearly ditched neither .NET (and .NET permeates most of Microsoft's server business) nor Silverlight and the "classic" view will still be there for when it makes sense (and it really does in a lot of scenarios). I suspect, however, "modern" apps will prefer to use the cleaner tile interface. If things like Gmail and Google Docs taught us something, is that simple interfaces are a good idea. With the onslaught of fresh desktop GUI ideas like Apple's full-screen apps, Gnome's new shell, and Canonical's Unity, Microsoft had to show something. And that's what damns them. When a competitor, any competitor, shows something, they make themselves show something like it. Frankly, this whole tile thing has "PDC 2003" written all over it.
- bad_user 15y ago
  this is what happens when you rely on software someone else controls True, but you invariably depend on somebody else to write the software you want. For the web, you depend on the industry to evolve towards your specific needs. Client-side, you depend on whichever company controls the operating-system of the devices you're trying to target. I wanted to mention open-source platforms when writing that comment, but in this specific context it isn't really useful, since that's not what .NET developers seek. They want Windows, Visual Studio, commercial support and a unified platform for the web, client and mobile (the promise of .NET), which is insane as there can be no such thing.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    > True, but you invariably depend on somebody else to write the software you want. Not really. When Zope Corporation ceased to develop Zope 2 in favor of Zope 3, the Plone community and others continued development of the 2 series. It currently has a lot of features migrated from the 3 series, a lot of new features of its own, but remains compatible with the Plone CMS that runs on its top. If, for whatever implausible reason, Oracle decides to ditch MySQL, its users already have a bunch of forks in place, perfectly functional. If, however, Oracle decides to discontinue their RDBMS, its users are royally screwed. > and a unified platform for the web, client and mobile (the promise of .NET), which is insane as there can be no such thing. Despite my dislike for Java (the language), I have to recognize it spans a very vast space, from dumbphones (J2ME) to fairly clever ones (CLDC, CDC) to very smart ones (Android) to desktops (Eclipse, NetBeans, several standalone development tools I use) to large distributed server solutions (Cassandra, Mule, Hadoop). And the JVM is sweet. I'd love to find a decent excuse to do something in Clojure on it.
matwood 15y ago
It's not like you won't be able to use .NET - they are just adding IE9 into the equation Exactly. I write a lot of .net code for work and haven't written a UI in anything other than HTML/JS in a long time. Too many people seem to be reading HTML/JS and thinking entire apps will now have to be written in them, and I just don't that's true.
- bladerunner 15y ago
  Exactly. There's no way that everybody is going to write entire apps in craptastic html/css/js.
dfj225 15y ago
> I don't understand what this "fret" is about. My perception is that they are worried that their existing knowledge (in .NET or any other MS dev tech) will not allow them to create applications for this new touch interface. Instead, they will be forced to use a new technology if they want to create an app for the new Windows 8 interface.
- TomOfTTB 15y ago
  You're partially right. But I'd draw your attention to this part of the article... "Underlying the discussion is that developers have clients, and clients want applications that run on a platform with a future. Currently, Microsoft is promoting HTML and JavaScript as the future for Windows applications, putting every client-side .NET developer at a disadvantage in those pitches." Remember most MS developers work in corporate environments. Either in companies or as consultants. No one wants to spend money to build a "legacy" app. So when Microsoft says HTML5 apps are the future but doesn't lay out how their APIs are going to work it freezes many .NET developers in their tracks. Because now Silverlight and WPF are legacy but you don't know how to pitch these new Windows 8 apps to a client because Microsoft hasn't specified how they'll work.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  I get the impression some developers really dislike learning new things.
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    I don't think it's learning new things per se. The main thing is they don't like the technology stack and the dev tools.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      Most of the time, the criticism comes before the first contact with the technology being criticized. For instance, most of the people who criticize Smalltalk's "alien" syntax never finished a single tutorial.

Animus7 15y ago

Microsoft's biggest problem is how fractured this new consumer-centric approach is inevitably going to feel for everyone, though devs are probably going to be hit the most, and that spells trouble. The problem is that Windows has a slew of legacy API's, languages, and frameworks that you can't get rid of without undermining the existing application ecosystem that made it popular. And it seems like they're not willing to get rid of any of that for the new world of web/mobile apps, like Apple did with flying colors. Instead they're shoehorning yet another framework onto an already bloated platform. So in the end they're trying to apply a lesson from Apple (touch, interactivity) with total disregard for why it worked (simplicity, seamlessness, usability). A recipe for failure if I ever saw one. Ballmer still doesn't get why iPhone won the mobile wars.

tomjen3 15y ago
The iPhone hardly won the mobile wars with Android gaining that much market share (and even in some measurements, exceeding it) - it is a little like saying that the British have won the war of independence because they have the rebels holed up in a fort.
- bonch 15y ago
  You're comparing a single phone to an entire operating system platform. If you include iPod touches and iPads, iOS's install base exceeds Android's.
- Animus7 15y ago
  By iPhone, I mean the concept, not the brand. And iPhone clearly paved the way for Android.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    Okay, that I will buy.
- ThomPete 15y ago
  That depends on what you are measuring. In my world Apple is the leader because they have the best business. If you only look at market share then nokia should have been the winner for a long time.

lini 15y ago

What's to stop you from putting a Silverlight APP in the tiled interface? Silverlight runs OK now in HTML pages so in theory it should work in the HTML + JS Win8 box as well :)

michael_dorfman 15y ago
I think what is more troubling is that Microsoft has apparently signaled a major shift in the preferred way to develop programs for the Windows platform and simultaneously refused to address the implications for developers, asking them to wait for further announcements in September. That's a recipe for fear, uncertainty and doubt within the tribe itself. Put another way: it's hard to reconcile "Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!" with "We're changing things radically concerning the way you develop, but we won't tell you how-- hold tight until September, 'mmm-kay?" EDIT: formatting
- bruceboughton 15y ago
  At this point Microsoft is just pre-empting Apple announcements at WWDC. It's all hubris until they deliver something more concrete. There will be internal debate about HTML5/JS vs .NET, and their choice of strategic platform has changed enough times in the last few years to make me take this announcement with a pinch of salt. I'm not worried until they shut up and ship.
- xradionut 15y ago
  There's a huge number of business developers this won't affect. .NET and "normal" desktop, web and server apps are still the bread and butter for these folks. Not everyone is on the bleeding edge.
  - teyc 15y ago
    There is a turf war at the moment between MS, Apple and Goog. Developers take time to tool up and skill up, and amidst all the gunsmoke and fog of war, we all have to decide who to pledge our allegiance to. By not mentioning Silverlight or WPF, MS is effectively switching sides from developers who have invested in exclusively MS tech to those who are far less partisan, and it hurts.

robgough 15y ago

As a .NET developer, I'm not in any way worried that they're going to replace the .NET framework as their primary enterprise platform, with javascript. For this tile UI, I'm a little surprised - if only because it's quite different from how WinPhone7 works (isn't it?).

keyle 15y ago
Let's face it. Thinking that WPF/C# can be replaced by HTML/JS is foolish at best. The html apps will be the widgetty type applications, while the real working computing applications will be written in solid .NET. My only concern is this integration of one into the other that they show. It looks like slapping a pig on top of a cow and asking for babies.
- robgough 15y ago
  I would have preferred if they had somehow integrated/replaced the system tray functionality with that of the tiling interface... as my understanding the tiles can mimic most of this functionality, if not do a little more. I dare say most the concern I'm seeing about this so far is that they've simply not gone far enough... Unless the tiling interface is the primary mode of use, then most people simply won't use it and it'll be relegated to the list of features the OS has, that simply no one uses. Think "Windows SideShow". Of course, this all depends on what MS are planning on doing - and I think they've made yet another PR misstep (even if it's only to developers) in that they've simply not released enough information. I can't decide if they're teasing deliberately in an attempt to drum up interest (working, but I would argue that it's more worry than interest to their target demographic) or whether they actually don't have much more than this demo and that they don't know what their long term plans are (even more worrying?)
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    I dare say most the concern I'm seeing about this so far is that they've simply not gone far enough... Unless the tiling interface is the primary mode of use, then most people simply won't use it and it'll be relegated to the list of features the OS has, that simply no one uses. I think their intent is that this new UI is the Windows UI. I think they're going to push devs to use this new UI for all apps unless they need to go to the old UI. Recall that native apps will not be cross platform, so there's motivation for devs to target this new UI to run on x86 and all the ARM variants.

Andrex 15y ago

Last time Silverlight was in the headlines it was because, surprise, MS was pushing HTML5/JS over it. Same deal here, I can't say I'm too shocked this time. Although now their API situation is more of a mess, with normal native APIs plus HTML5 for Windows now, then there's Silverlight for Windows Phone 7. Makes you wonder if they didn't have any foresight about this decision when choosing WP7's set of APIs.

JonoW 15y ago

As a .NET dev, I'm not worried, MS has invested really heavily into .NET, it's everywhere in their eco-system now. Even if the preferred way to build some desktop apps was HTML/JS, .NET is still going to be in use in many other places. Even if they did ditch .NET (which I don't think they will), it would take years to do; plenty of time to move to something else ;)

rbanffy 15y ago
Keep in mind those HTML/JS apps will probably have hooks into .NET libraries installed on the system. And I bet that HTML will still be compatible with ActiveX.

leon_ 15y ago

That shows the risks of vendor lock in. Although I don't believe MS will replace .NET with html5/js in any regard it shows pretty good why you shouldn't commit too much to vendor specific/centric technologies.

JonoW 15y ago
Based on that logic no one should be building iPhone or iPad apps. You have to commit to something at some point. The odds of a company ditching a product they have invested hugely into is probably the same as the odds of an open technology or framework simply becoming unpopular.
- jcromartie 15y ago
  You can commit to something, for a time, without pushing everything else out of your brain. I spent quite some time doing iOS development, and it would certainly not be the end of the world if the entire toolchain changed tomorrow.

pilif 15y ago

I don't know. From that demo, I really doubt that the tiled interface will ever provide enough functionality for these apps to be really useful or as full-featured as their real desktop counterparts. I see this tile-thingy more as an additional overview-shell, but the real work will remain to be done in the classic apps. This is more comparable to the Mac Dashboard widgets than to a complete UI redesign. As such, I see no problem in doing these widgets in HTML/JS which is what we have used ever since. The "real" applications will still be done in whatever technology is available under windows. Of course, everything is just speculation. I just know that I'm sure as hell never going to use a touch interface on my desktop PC nor drag around tiles with the mouse trying to fake enough inertia to get the scrolling to go.

thom 15y ago
I think the comparison to the Mac Dashboard is a very good one. With the introduction of SideShow in Vista, Microsoft showed an interest in simple at-a-glance apps, and it seems like they want to push that interaction model for 'tablet mode', while still leaving everything in place for 'desktop mode'.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  I would think more on the lines of a cross between Dashboard widgets and full-screen apps.
illumin8 15y ago
I think you are onto something here. I think the tiled interface will be very similar to the Windows Media Center shell. It's a specialized interface for touch, just like WMC is a specialized interface for couch surfing. In the end it's not going to be very useful for end users unless Microsoft really bites the bullet and forces developers to migrate to the tiled interface, en mass. Apple did that with iOS, basically forcing developers to create entirely new apps, because the input method of touch was so drastically different that apps requiring mouse-level precision would never work. Microsoft will never do that, so instead they need to fragment their OS into two interfaces, touch and classic. I fear a Windows 8 tablet will be the worst of both worlds. It will need enough horsepower to run "classic mode" with all of the baggage that brings, yet most tablet users are just doing simple media consumption so they can stay in tiled mode most of the time. In the end you bring a product to market that costs $1500, has a quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM, and gets 4 hours of battery life - not to mention it weighs 3 pounds. Basically you end up with the current crop of Windows tablets. A stylus will probably be included just to make classic mode usable. I'm not saying there isn't a market for a powerful tablet that can run Windows 8 in classic mode, but those tablets have been around for years and they haven't gotten mass market traction for a reason.

thedigitalengel 15y ago

We should have something like GWT that compiles .NET to whatever Microsoft thinks developers should use.

tianyicui 15y ago
For HTML5, we already have one: http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html
- gte525u 15y ago
  That's not exactly a fully supported toolset. There is another C# to js compiler http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp which is AFAICT another side project. If one of these were to stick - it would first need to be supported be a somewhat larger organization (ala apache foundation for java components, or google for GWT/Closure).
- junkyarddog 15y ago
  For the F# developer, WebSharper ( http://websharper.com/ http://websharper.com/ ) seems to offer a great implementation based on the Formlets abstraction. For some theoretical background, have a look at http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/links/formlets/ http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/links/formlets/ which has some articles describing the Form abstraction by Philip Wadler, et al.
jimbobimbo 15y ago
The fun thing is that there WAS something from Microsoft themselves, called Volta. I've never heard anything about this project for 2-3 years already. RIP, I suppose.

felixmar 15y ago

The problem with WPF/Silverlight is that Microsoft never managed to make it feel fast enough to compete with native code. The Windows Phone 7 UI is praised because of its excellent performance. Now imagine that Microsoft would have used WPF instead. Because of the Silverlight requirement it's impossible for third party app developers to reach same level of performance as build-in services. I would like to see a new UI framework that everyone inside Microsoft feels is good enough to use. And give third parties equal access.

chrisjsmith 15y ago
Agreed. Visual Studio 2010 is testament to your comment.
- keyle 15y ago
  I've got a i7 8gig of ram and SSD and VS2010 runs like a complete pig on a year old project. It's unbelievably bad. Each time I report problems, they close them saying 'cannot reproduce'. So if that's the case, why do people upvote my issues?
  - chrisjsmith 15y ago
    Same trouble here. My (work) workstation is a Dual Xeon, 12Gb RAM, SAS 15k disks (to replace the crap SSDs Dell shipped with the machines). We have (using CLOC) about 250K lines of C# (!). MVC3/NHibernate etc. Takes FOREVER to compile and run (3-4 minutes per change). Resharper is unusable. Crashes every 30 mins or so. Using SP1. I get the same with Microsoft Connect as well. It's a disaster zone. I hate working with the stack.
    - jimbobimbo 15y ago
      I would start with removing Resharper first. While I understand why people like having it around, I've seen it degrading performance of otherwise perfectly capable setup on the same solution which flies on a similar setup without Resharper.

chrisjsmith 15y ago

I don't see what the problem is. It's a logical step and it's better for the mind than filling it up with .Net APIs. I think the most vitriolic responses have been from people who have either been brainwashed by WebForms or never had to do anything on the web before.

sradnidge 15y ago

I love the first comment in the original thread, specifically: >“Microsoft has first class cross-platform application framework called Silverlight and they want us to right freaking javascript.” Yeh, because js isn't a first class, cross platform language...

thomasz 15y ago
To be fair, it should be a lot less expansive to get a complex UI running for 90% of a typical user base with silverlight, provided that your business model allows you to ignore the fsf crowd. In the context of those touchy-feely applications for windows 8, it is a hysterically stupid move to force developers into the web stack, and then tell them to go fuck themselves and port the whole shit to Silverlight for WP7 devices. It is really less "cross platform", considered what platforms those devs care about. I can think of very few reasons for this idiocy besides relations between OS and devtools devision having quietly deteriorated from post WWII style peace to nuclear war.
eropple 15y ago
The platforms that I, when doing .NET development, care about are: -Windows -Windows Phone -Xbox 360 (for games) And maybe Linux if I'm feeling really charitable and want to make my stuff Mono-compatible. JavaScript is not a first-class language on at least two of those platforms. It's not a cross-platform application development language on three of them.

brudgers 15y ago

The idea that Microsoft is going to go the IOS route is so completely contrary to the interests of their primary customer bases - business and enterprise - that it is only the constant call of the techpress for Microsoft to be more like Google or Apple which gives the idea credence. Windows has had HTML and script based Apps in the form of HTA's for a long time (i.e. IE5). So in many ways the buzz seems more of a marketing coup than a revolutionary new approach (aimed at getting consumers to enable scripting on desktop installations). I suspect Silverlight to be deprecated as a web technology because it has many of the same issues as Flash (for which it was always intended as an alternative/replacement), but .NET is here to stay. It is .NET that facilitates the expanding ability of Windows to run on diverse architectures - since Windows Vista the Windows OS is essentially .NET for many purposes and Windows 8 and WP7 are extensions of that roadmap. A roadmap which, again, is business focused and tailored to provide stability. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496%28v=vs.85%29.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms536496%28v=vs.85%2... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application http://support.microsoft.com/kb/200874 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/200874

jimbobimbo 15y ago
Windows had never made it into "essentially .NET". Longhorn was going to be the first one, but it was scraped and Vista is essentially Win32/Win64 APIs with pre-installed .NET framework. I doubt there's anything in Windows client that is written in .NET - server is a different story though.
- brudgers 15y ago
  I did not say that Windows was written in .NET. The parent comment was "essentially .NET for many purposes." Among those purposes would be development of applications and system automation.
- kenjackson 15y ago
  Windows Media Center is written in .NET.

jcromartie 15y ago

I don't feel sorry for anybody who invests everything in a single platform. That is a simple recipe for quickly becoming obsolete.

rbanffy 15y ago

I can only imagine the turf wars raging right now about this apparent dichotomy between classic and tiled. I assume my friends there are not having a very happy day.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

Anyone who has worked enterprise in the eastern half of the U.S. knows better than to be worried by this. There are so many mission-critical business applications written in C#, and even VB.net, that the idea of .NET jobs going away in the next 15 years, even if MS were to abandon the product today, is nil. Where I live I would guess that at least 90% of job postings for programmers are .NET.

pnathan 15y ago
It's sort of like COBOL. =)
- bladerunner 15y ago
  Yes, Javascript is sortof like COBOL
ern 15y ago
How many of these mission critical business systems are written with WPF or Silverlight for the native front-end? I don't know the numbers, but my guess is that the bulk would still be Winforms. I think a lot of people who develop desktop front ends for .NET (and want to develop on new projects) would have put effort into learning Silverlight and/or WPF and are afraid that the effort is going to be wasted, as they need to learn another technology.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  What exactly does learning Silverlight entail that differs from learning any other .NET environment? XAML is just an xml markup. I only used it on a WP7 app and it took me a couple of hours to get the gist of how it works.
  - luffy 15y ago
    Not much really, especially if you limit the XAML to basic layouts. If you do everything in C#, it's not too much different from something like, say, WinForms. Which is why people like it.

powertower 15y ago

All this fear is coming from weak-knee programmers and people who love to bask in FUD. You don't build applications with logic and complicated function out of HTML and JS. Not today, not tomorrow. My (and your) 10k, 100k, 200k line C# applications are not writable in JS. Sure, there is GMail and Node.JS as examples. But thats kind of a niche compared to everything else. HTML and JS are just going to be another way do to UI, and nothing else. You'll still need to write the C# app and use .NET to do the backend. HTML/JS will be another option right along with XAML/WPF and SilverLight.

nkassis 15y ago
"My (and your) 10k, 100k, 200k line C# applications are not writable in JS." I don't know that this will be true for very much longer, if it's not already been disproven. Javascript isn't the greatest language out there but it's gain functionality that is removing the limitations that uses to plague it compared to other languages. Slow VM is not longer true, no multithreading is not longer true. Webworkes are a little odd for sure, but they still make it possible to build multithreaded applications. WebGL/Canvas allow for some very advanced graphical applications. You can now access local storage, a database (and in node, other databases), new ArrayBuffers and such. It's a different environment now.
- powertower 15y ago
  > I don't know that this will be true for very much longer, if it's not already been disproven. Please show me examples of these 50k+ line JS applications that have no backend, or run JS on the backend, that are not a mess. ...That you can develop, debug, and tie in with the rest of the system with the same ease (or even 10% of ease) as you can with native .NET apps.
  - nkassis 15y ago
    I can't point to any (GMail client side code must be pretty big), but I do have a 5K one that I work on daily and it's not a mess. This project is still very much in development and will grow with time. It's not 50k and it's for sure not a project with 20 devs but even this size was unthinkable earlier. I'm working on a backend in node to take advantage of Websockets.

swix 15y ago

.NET bleh. HTML5 is the future, cross platform. JavaScript will be made into a robust language in the coming years, with classes, etc. The crappy DOM will probably change for the better, HTML5 apps will run as local apps and tap into the native APIs of the system. Client = HTML5 + JS , yes we dont need .NET here, where .NET/C/C# and others will be used, will be in the backend, frontend/client can be perfectly made with HTML5 + JS. The only exception is perhaps games and apps such as Photoshop, but 90% of enterprise stuff that is simply thin clients speaking to a big backend database+etc can be perfectly made with HTML5. HTML5 is here to stay, .NET will be the exception. (Games/Heavy backend/3D apps/Photoshop) sort of things... nothing more. Or who knows, maybe in the future with WebGL and what not even some more complicated games can be made just with HTML5.

crag 15y ago
I agree with all of this. BUT it'll take a while to get there. .NET will be around for a long time in the backend.
bonch 15y ago
> HTML5 is the future, cross platform. JavaScript will be made into a robust language in the coming years, with classes, etc. People have been claiming HTML and Javascript were the future of application development for about 15 years now. They also claimed it about Java and, ironically, .NET.

vyrotek 15y ago

It seems kind of odd that Microsoft would be all in with Azure and then drop the .Net framework.

jwwest 15y ago

Windows developers have a bad reputation for being fixated on one or two programming languages and tools at the expense of learning other platforms. Can't say I would feel sorry for them if any of this were to be true. There's something to be said about breadth versus depth.

ern 15y ago
Windows developers have a bad reputation for being fixated on one or two programming languages and tools at the expense of learning other platforms. Can't say I would feel sorry for them if any of this were to be true. This is an unfortunate, and valid criticism. I've worked with senior C# and VB developers who hadn't encountered the concept of an (OO) interface, but they got along just fine with their day-to-day jobs, copy-pasting. However, I do feel sympathy for them - they were so insulated from the wider programming and CS communities, that they didn't even realize there were other things happening in the wider dev world. Their fault was one of ignorance, not arrogance (and of believing everything Microsoft told them at the developer events they attended).

evo_9 15y ago

I think the bigger issue here is how Microsoft is handling the dissemination of coming changes. Why on earth say nothing except 'please wait until september'. Between now and September I could learn object-c and move to another platform. Just a really unwise approach. At the minimum they should be saying, '...your investment in the Microsoft stack will not be lost, C#, F# and VisualStudio are important technologies that we are committed too...'. So here we are left to speculate as to what happens next. I can't believe they would simply toss all the technology out - what's the alternative for true native apps, pure C++? As far as the HTML5/Javascript thing goes - hell yeah, I switched to using html(4/5)/javascript and css(2/3) for my front-end code over a year ago. I think this is actually a pretty shrewd move and likely will be more a focus for the tablet and phone developer side allowing easier porting across all the emerging platforms. The fact that I may be able to use that same tech for Windows desktop apps is nice bonus, but like we all saw on iOS - nothing beats native for the best client experience, at least for now.

thepumpkin1979 15y ago

This is a market strategy. Microsoft knows desktop apps, WPF, Silverlight are losing the battle against HTML5/CSS/JS based apps, the most obvious movement Microsoft could have done is create a 2 minute video of their next OS and say "hey Web Developers, you can use your web skills here too". Also, this video says nothing about the architecture behind this "Launcher"(because that what it looks like), there are a lot of possibilities. May be IE10 has some kind of <protected-frame> element so you can specify certain permissions like network access, file system access and stuff, maybe it requires a manifest in which you can specify what "DOM manipulation technology" do you want to use, the most obvious options are: - A Javascript (IE9 code-name "Chakra" engine) based file. - A JScript.NET file. - Any DLR based language file. - Any .NET assembly decorated with some fashion attributes like <Windows8Launcher.TileDomBehindAttribute(typeof(MyTileHandler))> or something which you can easily compile with any .NET compiler like C#, VB.NET, C++ CLI, etc. May be developing in HTML is completely optional and each Tile can be developed using Silverlight or Windows Presentation Foundation technologies... we don't know. We know that Microsoft is a legacy company, they will not abandon .NET anytime soon.

ngranado 15y ago

you should be able to get all of the .net specific stuff you want via jscript what is the big deal here?

emp_ 15y ago

The web-based API looks like the Active Channels 2ND attempt, there's nothing like history to get a glimpse of the future. [1] [1]: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768176.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768176.aspx

fleitz 15y ago

.NET is not going away anytime soon. If anything I feel this further deprecates silverlight. There is no way that MS expects the majority of apps to be written in HTML+JS, it's just an option to make it easy for those used to HTML+JS to write apps on the platform, in the same vein as writing an HTML+JS app for iPhone. Most serious Windows applications are written in C++ for Win32 anyway, VS which is becoming more and more .NET everyday still has heavy roots in COM/Win32. Office integration is still best done in C++. No these apps aren't whats fueling the consumer web but they make big bucks for the vendors who write them, and ensure platform lockin to Windows as MS tries to transition away from their desktop monopoly. MS is not stupid enough to pull another Vista and make apps that used to work not work. Even if MS were very serious about transitioning everything to HTML+JS you'd be looking at a 10-15 year timeline. The day you see Office written in HTML+JS is the day to start worrying if you're a Win32 / .NET app developer.

charlieflowers 15y ago

Microsoft seems to have lost all sense of direction. I just see them launching a bunch of superficially considered me-too initiatives instead of anything meaty. They still are the gorilla, but it almost looks like they've given up. Is it just me?

contextfree 15y ago

fwiw, there are apparently a fair number of newly added .NET-related dlls and stuff in the leaked Win8 alpha builds.

Gidion 15y ago

This does remind me of the "no-native-.NET-support" Windows Sidebar attempt. It failed in the end, but even there one of the first things we did was find a way to host .NET elements in the sidebar (and it was possible, but you had to jump through many hoops). We will have to wait and see, but I can't imagine there will not be a way to host Silverlight in one of the tiles. Also this whole "every app is going to be html + javascript" does remind me of the earlies Apple IPhone developer offerings.