3 ms·
I see many negative comments about Microsoft and "yet another UI framework"... I started back in the Webforms/Silverlight days, and brough over my skills to eac
by g0gzs 4y ago
I see many negative comments about Microsoft and "yet another UI framework"... I started back in the Webforms/Silverlight days, and brough over my skills to each next iteration and had a pretty pleasant dev. experience ever since.
I was using the following: Silverlight -> WPF -> Windows Phone -> WPF -> Angular/webdev -> Xamarin.Forms and now since MAUI Preview 11, we've been building our new mobile/desktop product with it, and we'll release it soon.
The part where I was a web developer was honestly awful. Web frontend isn't even close to what any of those mentioned above are right now. Layouting stuff on the web is a nightmare, a little less now that grid is coming along, but still lightyears away from what you have in WPF/XF/MAUI... and then there's decoupling UI code from your business logics for testability. With Angular/React/Vue (Vue suted me most, but it's still meh) it's halfway there but still meh.
On the .Net stack, you have battletested frameworks and libraries that have been around for ages, on both, hobbyist apps to full blown enterprise solutions. At some point I was working on a desktop app that would run on a 5*6 monitor array (highway control room software)... 30 windows open in parallel from one app, everything in sync, everything just working 24/7.
And now, we'll cover Android/iOS and Windows desktop, with one codebase, and it's not just a simple CRUD app. We're connecting with RFID readers, using cameras, geo service etc... I can't imagine pulling this off, in the timeframe we did, and the amount of devs working on it, with any other stack.
Yes, there's no Linux support, but the way MAUI is laid out, it shouldn't be too hard to get that going. Just look at who and how contributed the Tizen backend. I'm sure the folks at MS will welcome you with open arms if you want to contribute some effort into making Linux happen.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- isodev 4y ago> Web frontend isn't even close to what any of those mentioned above are right now. Layouting stuff on the web is a nightmare. One with more experience with web dev can easily submit the exact opposite comment - web layout and tooling are light years ahead of whatever most recent .NET endeavor. The web is also already cross-platform, where every platform looks and feels native to itself. This announcement doesn't show off a single native macOS or iOS component. Seeing it's inspired/supported by Xamarin, APIs for look & feel are minimal unless you opt for a platform-specific implementation anyway (e.g., the "common" animations API is a fraction of what one requires for a good experience on iOS). I'm sure MAUI will be famous in enterprise apps where the latest productivity tool needs to be put together quickly and inflicted on employees for years to come (cough* Teams, Office...).
- pleb_nz 4y agoI do web dev and haven't done much desktop dev in years. But a few months back I got to play with WPF and it was an absolute joy and breeze compared to web dev IMO.
- g0gzs 4y agoI'd say I'm equally fluent in both because I put heaps of effort into my web dev skills so I could charge the same hourly rate and deliver the same quality I deliver for Desktop/Mobile. I adhere to certain standards when I put my name behind something I deliver to a client. The amount of "oh yeah, it seems hacky but that's the best practice" on web is mindboggling. Every time I had to use HTML/CSS/JS hacks to achieve something rather simple in terms of laying out components on the screen, I wanted to quit working on the project. The amount of work you have to put into web frontend to get it pixel perfect and according to the design, is roughly 40-50% more than achieving the same thing on let's say WPF. Take it however you want, but what MS achieves in dev experience on their UI stacks is quite admirable. The fact that those stacks don't survive long is a another pair of shoes.