7 ms·

HTML5-based Windows 8 enrages .Net devs, alienates Linux and Mono

54 points by jfruh 15y ago

bdfh42 15y ago
Tabloid style shock/horror. Skip it.
- watty 15y ago
  Well I thought it was a decent article with a sensational headline. I don't know any real .NET developers who are "enraged" nor does the article say this.
  - teyc 15y ago
    I'm one.
pilif 15y ago
As I said here, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615797 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615797, I strongly believe that the windows 8 UI we have seen so far is more or less just an improved widget/gadget shell, like a fullscreen Mac Dashboard. I really think that real, full-fledged applications will still be written in whatever languages are available today. All of this fear is IMHO just plain FUD
- bmj 15y ago
  And isn't the FUD just directed at Silverlight development? I could see Silverlight losing ground as more browsers support HTML5, but as others have pointed out, UI is only small part of the .NET ecosystem.
- sevenproxies 15y ago
  I think the HTML5 and JS technology in Windows 8 is simply another software development framework and not meant to replace .net and friends. Perhaps Microsoft is looking to encourage the development of apps (in such a way that Apple has demonstrated with the App Store). .net will still be available for the larger and/or more involving programs. Remember, Windows is popular because of Microsoft's firm dedication to backwards compatibility (for better or worse).
- bonch 15y ago
  I really think that real, full-fledged applications will still be written in whatever languages are available today. All of this fear is IMHO just plain FUD The issue is that those apps will be relegated to the crufty, legacy desktop tile while the first-class apps get to appear on the new shell.
wccrawford 15y ago
I still remember the uproar when .NET was first announced, and how it was widely predicted it would utterly fail, and people who couldn't understand why anyone would use it. IT evolves constantly, and you have to stay with it. Getting upset about it changing is pointless and being stuck on 1 technology will quickly see your business left behind.
- 51Cards 15y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I was also in the thick of things when .NET came out. We had a large established base of apps on the pre-existing versions of Visual Studio. The whole migration nightmare/uproar to .NET is still fresh in my mind and I clearly remember how the .NET supporters fundamentally said "Time to move on". Small bit of irony that now (in some cases) time to move on applies to .NET itself. (though I wholeheartedly agree that most of this uproar is silly, .NET is much more robust and flexible than HTML5 and not in any danger of being "replaced") Still brings a small smile to my face though when I see .NET developers upset about no viable migration path forward. This cycle will repeat again in X years, it's the nature of the biz. Most of our careers are going to span several major shifts in technology and you just roll with it.
- ern 15y ago
  being stuck on 1 technology will quickly see your business left behind Or your career. I know of a couple of VB6 developers who stopped coding after .NET displaced it.
Ruudjah 15y ago
It seems killing Volta brings back the electricity at Microsoft.
gigantor 15y ago
I've used .net nearly exclusively for the past 8 years in my career and still believe this is all some stunt to generate negative hype. If this so-called uproar is caused by developers who are not willing to upgrade their skills, they shouldn't be in this business. The same event occured with VB6, which was replaced by .net, which will be replaced by something better, and everyone started reading their books again. Even if MS ends support for .net tomorrow (which it won't, i.e. WinXP tenure) too many companies are locked into .net technology and they'll still have work to come for years while they finally evolve to a new technology. If you really dislike change and still want to call yourself a programmer, transition to embedded devices and stick to low level ASM or C which should be around for a while.
- teyc 15y ago
  We continue to support a complex VB6 app (started development in 94). It is too expensive to port the entire app over, and now VB6 is left to languish. There are some problems with building some controls in 64 bit environment and we can't get support for it. Remember going from VB6 to .NET is a massive and risky investment. Why move if you think you are going to be abandoned again?
adolfojp 15y ago
I made the following angry rant on reddit. I think that it also fits here. The idea that .NET is going to be replaced by HTML5 and JavaScript is absolutely ridiculous. The only people who can make that claim are those who don't really know what .NET is. It is a desktop stack, a server stack, a runtime for many languages, those many languages themselves, and countless libraries that are being actively developed. HTML5 and JS is a minimalistic client side technology. One cannot replace the other. They are not analogous technologies. The biggest changes that could happen are: 1. HTML5 and JS become another presentation layer for .NET apps. 2. HTML5 and JS get hooks to allow it to be used to write basic App Store style apps and gadgets. (Gadgets are currently written in html and js so there would be no change there.) 3. HTML5 and JS become another dev platform for the Windows Phone. 4. Silverlight gets slowly phased out. That is, unless you believe that Microsoft secretly worked for 5 years to create a dev platform that is based on a technology that became popular just last year that can be used to replace every development technology like C++, .NET, etc., and that can be used to write anything from server side apps to games to database servers to operating system components. Do you really think that Microsoft is that good of a software company? But of course, this is all speculation, just like all of these sensationalist articles and threads. And nothing of value can come out of this. I can't wait for the formal announcement to be made. The amount of retarded discourse that the Win 8 announcement made is absolutely depressing.
- nxn 15y ago
  "The only people who can make that claim are those who don't really know what .NET is." Since this is about .NET developers supposedly being enraged, I'd guess it's more likely they don't know what HTML5 or JavaScript is -- and perhaps this leads them to assume it's somehow possible to use them as a "complete" application development platform. I don't know, either way I can't believe people are so lacking of reasoning to actually be concerned about this. I mean even if their worst nightmares came true and this was a sign that .NET is going to get phased out, Jesus Christ, just learn another platform. Carry the .NET experience over to something else, stop cornering your career into a single technology with some delusional idea that it will never become obsolete, and for god's sake stop crying like babies.
  - 15y ago
runjake 15y ago
Wasn't Silverlight $future_version going to be HTML5/JS/CSS based? It seems to me that means Windows 8 apps would be Silverlight $future_version-based. I'm lucky enough to be within earshot of a number of world-notable .NET/Silverlight developers and they're far from enraged, in fact quite the opposite, they're cautiously optimistic. This is probably a good thing, really. Let's not scathe Microsoft for moving towards openness.
- zemoo 15y ago
  Interestingly enough, it wasn't $future_version, but version 1.0, that didn't even support .NET and was scriptable only through JS. Silverlight is still scriptable through JS to this day. Given that Silverlight already supports a hybrid model I can image we could expect that to continue, with HTML as a possible alternative UI langauge to XAML.
iqster 15y ago
As others have noted, this article does some fear mongering. But it does raise some issues: 1) WPF might potentially go away. I'm glad I didn't waste any time learning this so I can care less. People who bought into "WPF is the future" might be unhappy but learned a valuable lesson. I myself learned this lesson with the "Compact Framework is the future" hype. I learned to be skeptical of proprietary stacks from then on. 2) As other posters have mentioned, a lot of apps have front and backends. For shops that use MSFT tech, .net isn't going away from the backend by any means. 3) HTML 5 + JS do let you build apps that are a lot closer to the Desktop experience than previously. If you haven't already, check out these slides (link:http://slides.html5rocks.com/#landing-slide http://slides.html5rocks.com/#landing-slide) and be prepared to be blown away. In fact, Google's Chrome initiative is betting that you can write most application front-ends in the browser now. If MSFT starts supporting these apps in a nice way, this might certainly make HTML5+JS the preferred way of building application front ends (I guess WinForm developers would be ticked off at this). 4) The Windows 8 HTML apps reminded me of the Vista sidebar widget in some ways. Wasn't there going to be a whole market place of apps? There was a lot of hype but it never happened. Thankfully, I had learned my lesson by the time I encountered the "sidebar gadget apps are the future" hype.
luffy 15y ago
Does HTML5 have an element that is similar to an scrollable editable grid, with column headers that don't scroll? I know a lot of people hate that UI idiom, but it's very common and as long as people like to use Excel, this idiom isn't going anywhere. Doing grids are a breeze w/ .NET. I don't think "use jqgrid" is an acceptable solution here... I'm asking about native HTML, the stuff that everyone is bragging about.
- chadcf 15y ago
  There are at least dozens if not hundreds of such grids done with html and javascript.
  - contextfree 15y ago
    I tried a few of the most popular ones last year, none were satisfactory.
    - nxn 15y ago
      ExtJS's set of grid panels was just about the most impressive one I've seen thus far (tree grids, group grids, paging grids, features for filtering/searching, sorting, hide/show columns, binding to xml/json/direct, etc). Though it would probably huge overkill to tie yourself into the whole framework just for one widget. Examples: http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/examples/#sample-2 http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/examples/#sample-2
      - edtechdev 15y ago
        yeah see also dojo's grid (grids I should say, there are several) jquery.sheet yui grid not sure if Google's closure library has a grid control and of course there are GWT, qooxdoo, etc. Heres a table comparing javascript frameworks, and there's a row for which have a grid control.
majmun 15y ago
.Net developer here, and im not enraged but feel satisfied with these events . i allready use javascript/JSON extensively because it has better integration with windows/.net/browser than Silverlight. There is advantage for silverlight in performance I believe but that is slowly changing now. because of browser competition. Silverlight could have bought me if it was integrated in browser by default like Javascript/HTML. That seemed like logical step but they didn't do it for some reason (if im not mistakeing)
moskie 15y ago
As an ASP.Net/C# developer, I saw these new HTML5/JS tiles as an opportunity for my skills to be applied in a new context. I'm actually pretty excited about that.
timinman 15y ago
HMMM Just thinking... what if Linux distros used HTML5/Javascript for a GUI Desktop Shell (Like Windows 8)? What if it became a true cross-platform development environment?
- rbanffy 15y ago
  That's exactly why W8 will certainly have lots of proprietary objects you'll need to call in order to do anything useful.
  - Revisor 15y ago
    For incompatibilities there would/will quickly rise frameworks that abstract you from them.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      Fair enough. They'll have to devise a better strategy to prevent that
  - timinman 15y ago
    That's fair enough considering Internet Explorer, but there are some counterpoints to consider: (1) If you watch the MS promotional video, attracting a wide range of developers is a stated goal of using HTML5; it would be counterproductive to that goal to add lots of proprietary code. (2) It would be easier to stick with the status quo than to recreate HTML5.
    - rbanffy 15y ago
      Their goal is to protect Windows from the competition. Providing proprietary hooks that cannot be easily duplicated elsewhere is their most likely strategy.
- timinman 15y ago
  'Not sure why I mentioned Linux and not OSX, possibly because I was jumping ahead to wonder if this could solve the Gnome/KDE/Unity debate (but who am I kidding?)
bad_user 15y ago
Meanwhile, de Icaza has formed his own startup, Xamarin, which will keep working on Mono and commercial .NET stacks. But here's something interesting:the Xamarin home page highlights .NET development for iOS and Android, not Linux Can yellow journalism get any worse than already is?
- teyc 15y ago
  Actually, thank goodness for Xamarin and HTML (Windows 8). We will no longer be beholden to Microsoft with our future work.

54 points by jfruh 15y ago

bdfh42 15y ago

Tabloid style shock/horror. Skip it.

watty 15y ago
Well I thought it was a decent article with a sensational headline. I don't know any real .NET developers who are "enraged" nor does the article say this.
- teyc 15y ago
  I'm one.

pilif 15y ago

As I said here, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615797 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2615797, I strongly believe that the windows 8 UI we have seen so far is more or less just an improved widget/gadget shell, like a fullscreen Mac Dashboard. I really think that real, full-fledged applications will still be written in whatever languages are available today. All of this fear is IMHO just plain FUD

bmj 15y ago
And isn't the FUD just directed at Silverlight development? I could see Silverlight losing ground as more browsers support HTML5, but as others have pointed out, UI is only small part of the .NET ecosystem.
sevenproxies 15y ago
I think the HTML5 and JS technology in Windows 8 is simply another software development framework and not meant to replace .net and friends. Perhaps Microsoft is looking to encourage the development of apps (in such a way that Apple has demonstrated with the App Store). .net will still be available for the larger and/or more involving programs. Remember, Windows is popular because of Microsoft's firm dedication to backwards compatibility (for better or worse).
bonch 15y ago
I really think that real, full-fledged applications will still be written in whatever languages are available today. All of this fear is IMHO just plain FUD The issue is that those apps will be relegated to the crufty, legacy desktop tile while the first-class apps get to appear on the new shell.

wccrawford 15y ago

I still remember the uproar when .NET was first announced, and how it was widely predicted it would utterly fail, and people who couldn't understand why anyone would use it. IT evolves constantly, and you have to stay with it. Getting upset about it changing is pointless and being stuck on 1 technology will quickly see your business left behind.

51Cards 15y ago
Couldn't agree more. I was also in the thick of things when .NET came out. We had a large established base of apps on the pre-existing versions of Visual Studio. The whole migration nightmare/uproar to .NET is still fresh in my mind and I clearly remember how the .NET supporters fundamentally said "Time to move on". Small bit of irony that now (in some cases) time to move on applies to .NET itself. (though I wholeheartedly agree that most of this uproar is silly, .NET is much more robust and flexible than HTML5 and not in any danger of being "replaced") Still brings a small smile to my face though when I see .NET developers upset about no viable migration path forward. This cycle will repeat again in X years, it's the nature of the biz. Most of our careers are going to span several major shifts in technology and you just roll with it.
ern 15y ago
being stuck on 1 technology will quickly see your business left behind Or your career. I know of a couple of VB6 developers who stopped coding after .NET displaced it.

Ruudjah 15y ago

It seems killing Volta brings back the electricity at Microsoft.

gigantor 15y ago

I've used .net nearly exclusively for the past 8 years in my career and still believe this is all some stunt to generate negative hype. If this so-called uproar is caused by developers who are not willing to upgrade their skills, they shouldn't be in this business. The same event occured with VB6, which was replaced by .net, which will be replaced by something better, and everyone started reading their books again. Even if MS ends support for .net tomorrow (which it won't, i.e. WinXP tenure) too many companies are locked into .net technology and they'll still have work to come for years while they finally evolve to a new technology. If you really dislike change and still want to call yourself a programmer, transition to embedded devices and stick to low level ASM or C which should be around for a while.

teyc 15y ago
We continue to support a complex VB6 app (started development in 94). It is too expensive to port the entire app over, and now VB6 is left to languish. There are some problems with building some controls in 64 bit environment and we can't get support for it. Remember going from VB6 to .NET is a massive and risky investment. Why move if you think you are going to be abandoned again?

adolfojp 15y ago

I made the following angry rant on reddit. I think that it also fits here. The idea that .NET is going to be replaced by HTML5 and JavaScript is absolutely ridiculous. The only people who can make that claim are those who don't really know what .NET is. It is a desktop stack, a server stack, a runtime for many languages, those many languages themselves, and countless libraries that are being actively developed. HTML5 and JS is a minimalistic client side technology. One cannot replace the other. They are not analogous technologies. The biggest changes that could happen are: 1. HTML5 and JS become another presentation layer for .NET apps. 2. HTML5 and JS get hooks to allow it to be used to write basic App Store style apps and gadgets. (Gadgets are currently written in html and js so there would be no change there.) 3. HTML5 and JS become another dev platform for the Windows Phone. 4. Silverlight gets slowly phased out. That is, unless you believe that Microsoft secretly worked for 5 years to create a dev platform that is based on a technology that became popular just last year that can be used to replace every development technology like C++, .NET, etc., and that can be used to write anything from server side apps to games to database servers to operating system components. Do you really think that Microsoft is that good of a software company? But of course, this is all speculation, just like all of these sensationalist articles and threads. And nothing of value can come out of this. I can't wait for the formal announcement to be made. The amount of retarded discourse that the Win 8 announcement made is absolutely depressing.

nxn 15y ago
"The only people who can make that claim are those who don't really know what .NET is." Since this is about .NET developers supposedly being enraged, I'd guess it's more likely they don't know what HTML5 or JavaScript is -- and perhaps this leads them to assume it's somehow possible to use them as a "complete" application development platform. I don't know, either way I can't believe people are so lacking of reasoning to actually be concerned about this. I mean even if their worst nightmares came true and this was a sign that .NET is going to get phased out, Jesus Christ, just learn another platform. Carry the .NET experience over to something else, stop cornering your career into a single technology with some delusional idea that it will never become obsolete, and for god's sake stop crying like babies.
- 15y ago

runjake 15y ago

Wasn't Silverlight $future_version going to be HTML5/JS/CSS based? It seems to me that means Windows 8 apps would be Silverlight $future_version-based. I'm lucky enough to be within earshot of a number of world-notable .NET/Silverlight developers and they're far from enraged, in fact quite the opposite, they're cautiously optimistic. This is probably a good thing, really. Let's not scathe Microsoft for moving towards openness.

zemoo 15y ago
Interestingly enough, it wasn't $future_version, but version 1.0, that didn't even support .NET and was scriptable only through JS. Silverlight is still scriptable through JS to this day. Given that Silverlight already supports a hybrid model I can image we could expect that to continue, with HTML as a possible alternative UI langauge to XAML.

iqster 15y ago

As others have noted, this article does some fear mongering. But it does raise some issues: 1) WPF might potentially go away. I'm glad I didn't waste any time learning this so I can care less. People who bought into "WPF is the future" might be unhappy but learned a valuable lesson. I myself learned this lesson with the "Compact Framework is the future" hype. I learned to be skeptical of proprietary stacks from then on. 2) As other posters have mentioned, a lot of apps have front and backends. For shops that use MSFT tech, .net isn't going away from the backend by any means. 3) HTML 5 + JS do let you build apps that are a lot closer to the Desktop experience than previously. If you haven't already, check out these slides (link:http://slides.html5rocks.com/#landing-slide http://slides.html5rocks.com/#landing-slide) and be prepared to be blown away. In fact, Google's Chrome initiative is betting that you can write most application front-ends in the browser now. If MSFT starts supporting these apps in a nice way, this might certainly make HTML5+JS the preferred way of building application front ends (I guess WinForm developers would be ticked off at this). 4) The Windows 8 HTML apps reminded me of the Vista sidebar widget in some ways. Wasn't there going to be a whole market place of apps? There was a lot of hype but it never happened. Thankfully, I had learned my lesson by the time I encountered the "sidebar gadget apps are the future" hype.

luffy 15y ago

Does HTML5 have an element that is similar to an scrollable editable grid, with column headers that don't scroll? I know a lot of people hate that UI idiom, but it's very common and as long as people like to use Excel, this idiom isn't going anywhere. Doing grids are a breeze w/ .NET. I don't think "use jqgrid" is an acceptable solution here... I'm asking about native HTML, the stuff that everyone is bragging about.

chadcf 15y ago
There are at least dozens if not hundreds of such grids done with html and javascript.
- contextfree 15y ago
  I tried a few of the most popular ones last year, none were satisfactory.
  - nxn 15y ago
    ExtJS's set of grid panels was just about the most impressive one I've seen thus far (tree grids, group grids, paging grids, features for filtering/searching, sorting, hide/show columns, binding to xml/json/direct, etc). Though it would probably huge overkill to tie yourself into the whole framework just for one widget. Examples: http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/examples/#sample-2 http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs/examples/#sample-2
    - edtechdev 15y ago
      yeah see also dojo's grid (grids I should say, there are several) jquery.sheet yui grid not sure if Google's closure library has a grid control and of course there are GWT, qooxdoo, etc. Heres a table comparing javascript frameworks, and there's a row for which have a grid control.

majmun 15y ago

.Net developer here, and im not enraged but feel satisfied with these events . i allready use javascript/JSON extensively because it has better integration with windows/.net/browser than Silverlight. There is advantage for silverlight in performance I believe but that is slowly changing now. because of browser competition. Silverlight could have bought me if it was integrated in browser by default like Javascript/HTML. That seemed like logical step but they didn't do it for some reason (if im not mistakeing)

moskie 15y ago

As an ASP.Net/C# developer, I saw these new HTML5/JS tiles as an opportunity for my skills to be applied in a new context. I'm actually pretty excited about that.

timinman 15y ago

HMMM Just thinking... what if Linux distros used HTML5/Javascript for a GUI Desktop Shell (Like Windows 8)? What if it became a true cross-platform development environment?

rbanffy 15y ago
That's exactly why W8 will certainly have lots of proprietary objects you'll need to call in order to do anything useful.
- Revisor 15y ago
  For incompatibilities there would/will quickly rise frameworks that abstract you from them.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    Fair enough. They'll have to devise a better strategy to prevent that
- timinman 15y ago
  That's fair enough considering Internet Explorer, but there are some counterpoints to consider: (1) If you watch the MS promotional video, attracting a wide range of developers is a stated goal of using HTML5; it would be counterproductive to that goal to add lots of proprietary code. (2) It would be easier to stick with the status quo than to recreate HTML5.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    Their goal is to protect Windows from the competition. Providing proprietary hooks that cannot be easily duplicated elsewhere is their most likely strategy.
timinman 15y ago
'Not sure why I mentioned Linux and not OSX, possibly because I was jumping ahead to wonder if this could solve the Gnome/KDE/Unity debate (but who am I kidding?)

bad_user 15y ago

Meanwhile, de Icaza has formed his own startup, Xamarin, which will keep working on Mono and commercial .NET stacks. But here's something interesting:the Xamarin home page highlights .NET development for iOS and Android, not Linux Can yellow journalism get any worse than already is?

teyc 15y ago
Actually, thank goodness for Xamarin and HTML (Windows 8). We will no longer be beholden to Microsoft with our future work.