5 ms·

Is this a generational problem? They can’t find any younger devs willing to work on WPF?

by dt3ft 4y ago

mawadev 4y ago
I had an interviewer ask me about my WPF experience in 2018. I told them I don't believe in the technology since everything went towards HTML/CSS/JS. Looks like I was right. You couldn't honestly pay me enough to touch WPF in 2023. I remember burning out on making WPF look decent and like a web ui back in 2016. The dual way databinding is awesome, but XAML can't and will never reach the maturity of HTML and CSS. They sent me a contract with a bad salary, I didn't accept it. I hope beginners stick to the web.
Archelaos 4y ago
Just look for older devs then.
- NullPrefix 4y ago
  older devs are more expensive
  - dnndev 4y ago
    Exactly - pay top dollar for crud forms makes no sense just for them to be written in wpf…. Hello JavaScript
pjmlp 4y ago
Actually they can, that is the problem, all Windows UI frameworks suffer from the same issues that plagued IE, everyone moved on and the new intern's don't have any idea. You see this in several community talks, where .NET old timers ask about feature X in framework Y being available on framework Z, and many times they don't really understand what is being talked about. Most Microsoft veterans are now on Azure or Windows Server business units.
- exceptione 4y ago
  Ow wow. Since you are a bit in the know, do you think wpf might start a new life on Linux as it gets opened? Xaml wasn't bad.
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    I’d like to see it get merged into AvaloniaUI which is already cross platform and built by smart people with experience.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Besides Avalonia, there is Uno as well. The difference being Avalonia uses WPF XAML, whereas Uno uses UWP/WinUI XAML. However they are community projects. From Microsoft, maybe MAUI one day gets to support Linux, which again, uses its own XAML flavour due to its Xamarin origins.
    - exceptione 4y ago
      Thank you. I get the feeling that MS is not too interested in the desktop at all though. I can see the money is in the cloud and I don't complain from my KDE desktop, but from a distance it looks quite radical to see them throw their crown jewels into the river.
      - to11mtm 4y ago
        > I get the feeling that MS is not too interested in the desktop at all though. It hasn't served them well with WinUI (I tried it, but the versioning hell was too much.) That said, They over-compensated for over-focusing on desktop pre 2012ish. And now, they are acting completely silly in regards to MAUI (supporting Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, but -not- linux)
dnndev 4y ago
Not just younger devs. I am an older dev who has extensive experience with WPF and was relieved when I moved on to another stack. Having worked with winforms extensively wpf sucks on every level. Xaml is an atrocity that should not exist. Please Microsoft abandon xaml and back fully another established framework like react native for windows.
- colde 4y ago
  Interestingly, my experience is totally different. I loved working with XAML and C# for building Silverlight apps, and would have preferred using that across more platforms. Especially with a nice editor like Expression Bland that got folded into VS.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Totally had your experience as well. I thought that the bridge between XAML and the underlying object model was pretty rad. There were quite some rough edges, especially surrounding dependency properties. Those had way too much boilerplate. Also their hip new event system needed some fine tuning too.
ripley12 4y ago
No, it's not a generational thing. WPF hasn't had significant feature updates in the last 10 years, because MS abandoned it in favour of UWP. I wrote a bit about this recently: https://www.reillywood.com/blog/windows-ui-frameworks/ https://www.reillywood.com/blog/windows-ui-frameworks/

Is this a generational problem? They can’t find any younger devs willing to work on WPF?

by dt3ft 4y ago

Is this a generational problem? They can’t find any younger devs willing to work on WPF?

I had an interviewer ask me about my WPF experience in 2018. I told them I don't believe in the technology since everything went towards HTML/CSS/JS. Looks like I was right. You couldn't honestly pay me enough to touch WPF in 2023. I remember burning out on making WPF look decent and like a web ui back in 2016. The dual way databinding is awesome, but XAML can't and will never reach the maturity of HTML and CSS. They sent me a contract with a bad salary, I didn't accept it. I hope beginners stick to the web.

Archelaos 4y ago

Just look for older devs then.

NullPrefix 4y ago
older devs are more expensive
- dnndev 4y ago
  Exactly - pay top dollar for crud forms makes no sense just for them to be written in wpf…. Hello JavaScript

pjmlp 4y ago

Actually they can, that is the problem, all Windows UI frameworks suffer from the same issues that plagued IE, everyone moved on and the new intern's don't have any idea. You see this in several community talks, where .NET old timers ask about feature X in framework Y being available on framework Z, and many times they don't really understand what is being talked about. Most Microsoft veterans are now on Azure or Windows Server business units.

exceptione 4y ago
Ow wow. Since you are a bit in the know, do you think wpf might start a new life on Linux as it gets opened? Xaml wasn't bad.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  I’d like to see it get merged into AvaloniaUI which is already cross platform and built by smart people with experience.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Besides Avalonia, there is Uno as well. The difference being Avalonia uses WPF XAML, whereas Uno uses UWP/WinUI XAML. However they are community projects. From Microsoft, maybe MAUI one day gets to support Linux, which again, uses its own XAML flavour due to its Xamarin origins.
  - exceptione 4y ago
    Thank you. I get the feeling that MS is not too interested in the desktop at all though. I can see the money is in the cloud and I don't complain from my KDE desktop, but from a distance it looks quite radical to see them throw their crown jewels into the river.
    - to11mtm 4y ago
      > I get the feeling that MS is not too interested in the desktop at all though. It hasn't served them well with WinUI (I tried it, but the versioning hell was too much.) That said, They over-compensated for over-focusing on desktop pre 2012ish. And now, they are acting completely silly in regards to MAUI (supporting Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, but -not- linux)

dnndev 4y ago

Not just younger devs. I am an older dev who has extensive experience with WPF and was relieved when I moved on to another stack. Having worked with winforms extensively wpf sucks on every level. Xaml is an atrocity that should not exist. Please Microsoft abandon xaml and back fully another established framework like react native for windows.

colde 4y ago
Interestingly, my experience is totally different. I loved working with XAML and C# for building Silverlight apps, and would have preferred using that across more platforms. Especially with a nice editor like Expression Bland that got folded into VS.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Totally had your experience as well. I thought that the bridge between XAML and the underlying object model was pretty rad. There were quite some rough edges, especially surrounding dependency properties. Those had way too much boilerplate. Also their hip new event system needed some fine tuning too.

ripley12 4y ago

No, it's not a generational thing. WPF hasn't had significant feature updates in the last 10 years, because MS abandoned it in favour of UWP. I wrote a bit about this recently: https://www.reillywood.com/blog/windows-ui-frameworks/ https://www.reillywood.com/blog/windows-ui-frameworks/