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As someone who has been recently actually doing Windows development using HTML and Javascript I have a couple of observations. #1 Since I'm the only one in the

As someone who has been recently actually doing Windows development using HTML and Javascript I have a couple of observations. #1 Since I'm the only one in the thread who actually knows what they're talking about, naturally this will get downvoted to oblivion. Farewell sweet karma, I barely knew thee. :D #2 In order to actually get anything done you have to 'bust out' into the Windows APIs anyway. See here for a prime example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aew9yb99(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aew9yb99(v=vs.85).as... #3 For budgeting/political reasons I won't go into, I can say that this is possible with only the use of notepad. Speaking programmer to programmer, I strongly advise you to get better tooling than that. Really. This thing is an absolute pig to code and debug by hand. #4 The horror is entirely justified. This is how bad it is... it actually makes those retarded Java enterprise projects, where you have to cobble together 14 different frameworks that are fundamentally incompatible, look good.

raganwald 15y ago
Since I'm the only one in the thread who actually knows what they're talking about, naturally this will get downvoted to oblivion. Farewell sweet karma, I barely knew thee. :D Do not ignore the possibility that your comment will garner downvotes for talking about being downvoted. Your observations are worth reading. Why bury them underneath meta-commentary that does not add to the discussion?
- Stormbringer 15y ago
  On general principle I downvote meta discussions about karma/upvotes/whatever shiny beads and shells the site in question is using as faux currency. I wouldn't expect anything different from anyone else.
DougWebb 15y ago
I've been doing web application development with HTML+CSS+JS for many years, most on Unix but recently fully embedded in the .NET world. I can tell you from my experience that as good as VS and the .NET framework can be, they're way behind when it comes to web application development for cross-platform clients. (And by cross-platform I mean browsers other than IE.) For years most of my time has been spent developing through a terminal, with Vim as my editor and the world of Gnu command-line tools as my toolset. My primary development language was a scripting language, and my code-run-test iterative cycle took seconds. Now that I'm developing on .NET, it can take 20-30 seconds to restart my application to test a change I just made, not counting getting back to the part of the app I was working on. That's using the built-in IIS server; once I deploy to a real one I've got another round of testing and coding to do because they don't work the same way. I was much more productive in the old environment. I'm happy to see Microsoft moving towards making HTML5+JS a full-fledged member of their development system; it means that their tools are going to get much better at developing web applications, and maybe I'll be able to reach my old productivity level again. PS: I don't get the wailing about WPF getting replaced. WPF replaced WinForms, which replaced Win32, which replaced Win16, and I'm sure I'm missing some of the intermediates. The same kind of succession has occurred in most other parts of the Windows development stack. Microsoft has a long history of deprecating APIs and replacing them with completely different and incompatible APIs. All of these WPF developers, who I assume are simply too young to remember the earlier shifts, should be grateful that the new API has a fully backward-compatible history going back to the mid 90's and can carry them forward to any platform they might need to work on in the future.
- maxxxxx 15y ago
  Winforms did not replace Win32 and WPF did not replace Winforms. That's the problem.
  - DougWebb 15y ago
    The older libraries may still be around, but they're not the recommended choice anymore and they don't support everything you can do with the newer libraries. It'll be the same with HTML5 and Windows 8: you'll need to switch to develop apps for the new UI, but old apps will still work.
    - Stormbringer 15y ago
      It's all about the tooling.
wallflower 15y ago
> #2 In order to actually get anything done you have to 'bust out' into the Windows APIs anyway. I remember this being the case when we did VB6 application programming. We were constantly "shelling" to Win32. I'm surprised it is still so like that. Our favorite call was Win32 LockWindowUpdate.

raganwald 15y ago

Since I'm the only one in the thread who actually knows what they're talking about, naturally this will get downvoted to oblivion. Farewell sweet karma, I barely knew thee. :D Do not ignore the possibility that your comment will garner downvotes for talking about being downvoted. Your observations are worth reading. Why bury them underneath meta-commentary that does not add to the discussion?

Stormbringer 15y ago
On general principle I downvote meta discussions about karma/upvotes/whatever shiny beads and shells the site in question is using as faux currency. I wouldn't expect anything different from anyone else.

DougWebb 15y ago

I've been doing web application development with HTML+CSS+JS for many years, most on Unix but recently fully embedded in the .NET world. I can tell you from my experience that as good as VS and the .NET framework can be, they're way behind when it comes to web application development for cross-platform clients. (And by cross-platform I mean browsers other than IE.) For years most of my time has been spent developing through a terminal, with Vim as my editor and the world of Gnu command-line tools as my toolset. My primary development language was a scripting language, and my code-run-test iterative cycle took seconds. Now that I'm developing on .NET, it can take 20-30 seconds to restart my application to test a change I just made, not counting getting back to the part of the app I was working on. That's using the built-in IIS server; once I deploy to a real one I've got another round of testing and coding to do because they don't work the same way. I was much more productive in the old environment. I'm happy to see Microsoft moving towards making HTML5+JS a full-fledged member of their development system; it means that their tools are going to get much better at developing web applications, and maybe I'll be able to reach my old productivity level again. PS: I don't get the wailing about WPF getting replaced. WPF replaced WinForms, which replaced Win32, which replaced Win16, and I'm sure I'm missing some of the intermediates. The same kind of succession has occurred in most other parts of the Windows development stack. Microsoft has a long history of deprecating APIs and replacing them with completely different and incompatible APIs. All of these WPF developers, who I assume are simply too young to remember the earlier shifts, should be grateful that the new API has a fully backward-compatible history going back to the mid 90's and can carry them forward to any platform they might need to work on in the future.

maxxxxx 15y ago
Winforms did not replace Win32 and WPF did not replace Winforms. That's the problem.
- DougWebb 15y ago
  The older libraries may still be around, but they're not the recommended choice anymore and they don't support everything you can do with the newer libraries. It'll be the same with HTML5 and Windows 8: you'll need to switch to develop apps for the new UI, but old apps will still work.
  - Stormbringer 15y ago
    It's all about the tooling.

wallflower 15y ago

> #2 In order to actually get anything done you have to 'bust out' into the Windows APIs anyway. I remember this being the case when we did VB6 application programming. We were constantly "shelling" to Win32. I'm surprised it is still so like that. Our favorite call was Win32 LockWindowUpdate.