4 ms·

Perhaps due to a pervasive desire to maintain backwards compatibility, bugs and all?

by tcbawo 5y ago

gedy 5y ago
My previous company had a C++ portion/team and wow were they defensive about changing anything :-)
pjmlp 5y ago
That doesn't justify why Managed Direct X, XNA, Silverlight (on WP 7), .NET Native got the axe. Even the Longhorn failure, which resulted on the "everything COM", that then evolved into WinRT (basically COM + IInspectable + .NET metadata + sandboxing), could have worked out if everyone actually worked together. I don't believe that if there was actually a willingness from Windows/C++ crowd, they couldn't have helped to push the .NET runtime into improvements similar to .NET Native. Or to put into another way, the efforts done by Google and Apple improving the Objective-C, Swift and ART, respectively. In fact, probably the reasoning behind bringing Midori learnings into .NET Core (thus making C# into D like), has more to do with C++/CLI being Windows only, and the managed languages competition outside Windows than anything else.
- zamalek 5y ago
  > could have worked out if everyone actually worked together Apparently, Sinofsky suffers dreadfully from "not invented here syndrome." He simply does not trust anything that his team has not built, and Midori is the tip of the iceberg. There are a some instances where his attitude worked, but they were far and few between. You'll notice that there is a very distinct "firewall" between core architecture and "other teams" on the projects he managed, even today (e.g. .Net Office extensions are just COM).
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Indeed that is quite clear in between the lines on MSJ, Channel 9, blogs, PDC, BUILD, among others, since Visual Studio.NET came out.
sterlind 5y ago
nah, they had Drawbridge running on Midori, which allowed nearly perfect app compat. it really was a case of internal politics as far as I know. though another way of looking at it is that rewriting the entirety of Windows in Midori would be been a monumental feat, and by the time Satya became CEO it was clear Windows wasn't the future of the company, so that kind of investment didn't make sense.
pacaro 5y ago
Maybe, but my recollection from the time (as related to me by Bryan Willman) was that a group of base team architects did an analysis of the .Net runtime and created a list of technical concerns that they felt precluded it's use in any critical component of the OS. Of course, all of these concerns could presumably have been addressed or mitigated, but by the time analysis was released it was too late
- pjmlp 5y ago
  That is exactly my view, instead of addressing the issues, like Apple and Google have been doing the last decade, the decision was to double down on C++ and COM instead.
  - pacaro 5y ago
    Yes. And to a certain extent a **-swinging contest between DevDiv and the base team
threefour 5y ago
We know how well that worked for Symbian.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Also politics. Back in the day Nokia did road shows to gather employees feedback before going public. One point regarding Maemo that I and others did, was the missing radio link. Naturally that was a no go as they would eat into Symbian's turf. I happened to be in Espoo shortly after the burning platforms memo, and it did not land well, specially since the Qt and PIPS effort was finally gathering some support.

Perhaps due to a pervasive desire to maintain backwards compatibility, bugs and all?

by tcbawo 5y ago

Perhaps due to a pervasive desire to maintain backwards compatibility, bugs and all?

gedy 5y ago

My previous company had a C++ portion/team and wow were they defensive about changing anything :-)

pjmlp 5y ago

That doesn't justify why Managed Direct X, XNA, Silverlight (on WP 7), .NET Native got the axe. Even the Longhorn failure, which resulted on the "everything COM", that then evolved into WinRT (basically COM + IInspectable + .NET metadata + sandboxing), could have worked out if everyone actually worked together. I don't believe that if there was actually a willingness from Windows/C++ crowd, they couldn't have helped to push the .NET runtime into improvements similar to .NET Native. Or to put into another way, the efforts done by Google and Apple improving the Objective-C, Swift and ART, respectively. In fact, probably the reasoning behind bringing Midori learnings into .NET Core (thus making C# into D like), has more to do with C++/CLI being Windows only, and the managed languages competition outside Windows than anything else.

zamalek 5y ago
> could have worked out if everyone actually worked together Apparently, Sinofsky suffers dreadfully from "not invented here syndrome." He simply does not trust anything that his team has not built, and Midori is the tip of the iceberg. There are a some instances where his attitude worked, but they were far and few between. You'll notice that there is a very distinct "firewall" between core architecture and "other teams" on the projects he managed, even today (e.g. .Net Office extensions are just COM).
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Indeed that is quite clear in between the lines on MSJ, Channel 9, blogs, PDC, BUILD, among others, since Visual Studio.NET came out.

sterlind 5y ago

nah, they had Drawbridge running on Midori, which allowed nearly perfect app compat. it really was a case of internal politics as far as I know. though another way of looking at it is that rewriting the entirety of Windows in Midori would be been a monumental feat, and by the time Satya became CEO it was clear Windows wasn't the future of the company, so that kind of investment didn't make sense.

pacaro 5y ago

Maybe, but my recollection from the time (as related to me by Bryan Willman) was that a group of base team architects did an analysis of the .Net runtime and created a list of technical concerns that they felt precluded it's use in any critical component of the OS. Of course, all of these concerns could presumably have been addressed or mitigated, but by the time analysis was released it was too late

pjmlp 5y ago
That is exactly my view, instead of addressing the issues, like Apple and Google have been doing the last decade, the decision was to double down on C++ and COM instead.
- pacaro 5y ago
  Yes. And to a certain extent a **-swinging contest between DevDiv and the base team

threefour 5y ago

We know how well that worked for Symbian.

pjmlp 5y ago
Also politics. Back in the day Nokia did road shows to gather employees feedback before going public. One point regarding Maemo that I and others did, was the missing radio link. Naturally that was a no go as they would eat into Symbian's turf. I happened to be in Espoo shortly after the burning platforms memo, and it did not land well, specially since the Qt and PIPS effort was finally gathering some support.