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I do dearly hope Blazor works out - I would be so happy to never have to deal with the Javascript/Typescript tooling hell ever again - but I'm not holding my br

I do dearly hope Blazor works out - I would be so happy to never have to deal with the Javascript/Typescript tooling hell ever again - but I'm not holding my breath. Political shifts inside Microsoft could leave it dead and unsupported like Silverlight tomorrow...

jorgeleo 5y ago
"Political shifts inside Microsoft could leave it dead and unsupported like Silverlight tomorrow" Assumption or knowledge? How do you know this?
- thrower123 5y ago
  I've seen the cycle too many times over the past decade or so. It's really bad with the various desktop UI frameworks, but it happens with most everything they put out. If something doesn't get immediate traction, and doesn't have strong champions inside of Microsoft, things all too often wither on the vine and go by the board. Big bang initial rollout coinciding with Build, showing off some fancy capabilities that never quite actually are realized in the version released to general availability.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Even when they have strong champions, if they get distracted, the opposition is quite quick to move in.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Experience, many of us have been on the PC platform since the MS-DOS, and have seen how Microsoft politics play out, killing cool technologies because politics. Hence the famous xckd comic.
magicalhippo 5y ago
Well now it's all on GitHub tho, ain't it? So at least you could in theory pay someone else to maintain it or do it yourself.
bob1029 5y ago
> Political shifts inside Microsoft could leave it dead and unsupported like Silverlight tomorrow... I honestly don't see this happening. Beyond the open source arguments, blazor server-side mode is uniquely compelling specifically for organizations like Microsoft where there are thousands (tens of thousands?) of internal business systems that need some way to interact with, but don't necessarily need to serve 4k video traffic to the entire planet.
ducharmdev 5y ago
Compared to the Blazor tooling, the Typescript tooling is miles ahead imo. We did a Blazor app during a hackathon and I was pretty frustrated with how inconsistent the build errors were with blazor components. What makes me most skeptical about Blazor though, is that it's shifting a huge burden to the client just to make developers happy. Even if the runtime is stripped down and compiled to wasm, it seems kinda wild to send a whole runtime just so you can run C# code, especially when there's alternatives like Rust that require no runtime. What's funnier too, is that it's been possible to write F# on the frontend for a while now, compiling down to javascript (like clojurescript). It makes me wonder why this approach was never done with C# too, even if there are pitfalls in compiling to javascript.
- jordanab 5y ago
  I'm already seeing a lot of enterprise companies gearing-up to go all-in on Blazor. Having a single language (C#) for web, mobile and all other back-end services must be huge draw for them. > What's funnier too, is that it's been possible to write F# on the frontend for a while now, compiling down to javascript (like clojurescript). It makes me wonder why this approach was never done with C# too, even if there are pitfalls in compiling to javascript. There have been several initiatives which allowed you to do that. None of them really successful. I've worked with one specifically in the past (can't remember the project's name though), which even had C# types/bindings for Knockout.js.
- marwis 5y ago
  There were a quite few independent efforts to bring C#/.NET to the web the proper way (JSIL, SharpKit, WootzJz) but Microsoft was never interested in them and for some reason chose the invest in the worst and most wasteful technical solution.
- electroly 5y ago
  > Even if the runtime is stripped down and compiled to wasm, it seems kinda wild to send a whole runtime just so you can run C# code FWIW, you seem to be talking about Blazor-WASM, but most real-life Blazor usage right now is server-side Blazor which doesn't do any of that.
marcos100 5y ago
Even if it doesn't work out because of Microsoft politics, I think using one language for both will be the future. In my opinion, every language will have something like that.

jorgeleo 5y ago

"Political shifts inside Microsoft could leave it dead and unsupported like Silverlight tomorrow" Assumption or knowledge? How do you know this?

thrower123 5y ago
I've seen the cycle too many times over the past decade or so. It's really bad with the various desktop UI frameworks, but it happens with most everything they put out. If something doesn't get immediate traction, and doesn't have strong champions inside of Microsoft, things all too often wither on the vine and go by the board. Big bang initial rollout coinciding with Build, showing off some fancy capabilities that never quite actually are realized in the version released to general availability.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Even when they have strong champions, if they get distracted, the opposition is quite quick to move in.
pjmlp 5y ago
Experience, many of us have been on the PC platform since the MS-DOS, and have seen how Microsoft politics play out, killing cool technologies because politics. Hence the famous xckd comic.

magicalhippo 5y ago

Well now it's all on GitHub tho, ain't it? So at least you could in theory pay someone else to maintain it or do it yourself.

bob1029 5y ago

> Political shifts inside Microsoft could leave it dead and unsupported like Silverlight tomorrow... I honestly don't see this happening. Beyond the open source arguments, blazor server-side mode is uniquely compelling specifically for organizations like Microsoft where there are thousands (tens of thousands?) of internal business systems that need some way to interact with, but don't necessarily need to serve 4k video traffic to the entire planet.

ducharmdev 5y ago

Compared to the Blazor tooling, the Typescript tooling is miles ahead imo. We did a Blazor app during a hackathon and I was pretty frustrated with how inconsistent the build errors were with blazor components. What makes me most skeptical about Blazor though, is that it's shifting a huge burden to the client just to make developers happy. Even if the runtime is stripped down and compiled to wasm, it seems kinda wild to send a whole runtime just so you can run C# code, especially when there's alternatives like Rust that require no runtime. What's funnier too, is that it's been possible to write F# on the frontend for a while now, compiling down to javascript (like clojurescript). It makes me wonder why this approach was never done with C# too, even if there are pitfalls in compiling to javascript.

jordanab 5y ago
I'm already seeing a lot of enterprise companies gearing-up to go all-in on Blazor. Having a single language (C#) for web, mobile and all other back-end services must be huge draw for them. > What's funnier too, is that it's been possible to write F# on the frontend for a while now, compiling down to javascript (like clojurescript). It makes me wonder why this approach was never done with C# too, even if there are pitfalls in compiling to javascript. There have been several initiatives which allowed you to do that. None of them really successful. I've worked with one specifically in the past (can't remember the project's name though), which even had C# types/bindings for Knockout.js.
marwis 5y ago
There were a quite few independent efforts to bring C#/.NET to the web the proper way (JSIL, SharpKit, WootzJz) but Microsoft was never interested in them and for some reason chose the invest in the worst and most wasteful technical solution.
electroly 5y ago
> Even if the runtime is stripped down and compiled to wasm, it seems kinda wild to send a whole runtime just so you can run C# code FWIW, you seem to be talking about Blazor-WASM, but most real-life Blazor usage right now is server-side Blazor which doesn't do any of that.

marcos100 5y ago

Even if it doesn't work out because of Microsoft politics, I think using one language for both will be the future. In my opinion, every language will have something like that.