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My understanding is that it takes orders of magnitude longer to develop native Windows applications than it does to develop webapps. I think that your suspicion

My understanding is that it takes orders of magnitude longer to develop native Windows applications than it does to develop webapps. I think that your suspicion is right and that some PM along the way was able to make the business case that we could ship 75% of the product using 10% of the engineering resources. It's a drag, though, because as everyone will immediately see, having a shortcut on your keyboard to open glorified GPT-4 isn't really a killer feature.

usef- 2y ago
> takes orders of magnitude longer to develop native Windows applications than it does to develop webapps. That seems extremely far-fetched to me. If it's for economic reasons, I think it's more likely related to availability of developers with webapp experience vs native experience.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  Which they could easily solve if they invested in training new hires on their own internal tech, but I suspect that’s long been cut to the bone. So if you can only rely on what skills people have when they join, you’re going to dilute any proprietary tech you have.
- joenot443 2y ago
  It's precisely for economic reasons, hiring a qualified team being the long tail here. I assure you guys that it's much, much easier finding a team of decent web devs than a team of decent Windows devs. Is that really so far-fetched?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - usef- 2y ago
    I assume you're right, but it's still quite absurd. Apple has recently released applications written natively in WinUI (iCloud for Windows). So Apple can more easily hire/train WinUI developers than Microsoft? I'd accept the "difficulty" excuse from a company like Walmart. But we're talking about a (relatively) small number of built-in mini applications here, inside a tech-specialised company that created, maintains and presumably promotes this native framework.
pjmlp 2y ago
Only in alternative universe, or by Web developers that never wrote a Windows application.
- joenot443 2y ago
  Well that's just the thing, I would assume there are significantly more web developers in the market than developers with experience writing Windows apps of a high enough quality to be shipped in the OS.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Yet, there are plenty of native applications around.
    - vitorgrs 2y ago
      You also need to follow all the Windows guidelines pattern here.... The only choice for this for a while was WinUI/UWP. And there isn't a lot of WinUI/UWP devs.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Oh, boy, there is plenty of choice again showing lack of knowledge.
        vitorgrs 2y ago
        Which choice?
skywhopper 2y ago
For someone with no training on Windows tech, using no helper tools, but who has lots of experience using web tech, maybe. But not only is that not true with the right skills and tools, but these webapps don’t even have feature parity. If they can’t do everything a native app can do then it’s not even a comparison.
dagw 2y ago
My understanding is that it takes orders of magnitude longer to develop native Windows applications than it does to develop webapps. If you know what you are doing, not at all. That being said the technologies are quite different and not all skills are transferrable. If you're an experienced web developer, then transferring to writing Windows apps takes a bit of getting used to. Once you've wrapped your head around C#, Visual Studio and WPF or WinUI3, and embraced the Window Way, it's actually a quite productive environment. What I suspect we might be seeing is that Windows has so thoroughly lost the developer mindshare battle, that not even Microsoft can find experienced Windows devs to hire, and most of their new developers have a web first programming background and have never used any of the Windows GUI frameworks.
- joenot443 2y ago
  That's essentially I'm suggesting. I totally agree that in a world where one's team is made up of highly skilled C# developers with lots of experience writing Windows apps, I'm sure productivity is fantastic. In the world which 99% of software teams live in though, the former skillset is far, far rarer than the React/node/Vue etc. toolkit which is a dime a dozen these days. If a fresh team wants to from 0 to functioning product, I still stand by that they'll get it out the door _much_ faster using some agreed upon webstack than they would doing it the Windows Way. Hence the "orders of magnitude" phrasing which others are having trouble with.

usef- 2y ago

> takes orders of magnitude longer to develop native Windows applications than it does to develop webapps. That seems extremely far-fetched to me. If it's for economic reasons, I think it's more likely related to availability of developers with webapp experience vs native experience.

skywhopper 2y ago
Which they could easily solve if they invested in training new hires on their own internal tech, but I suspect that’s long been cut to the bone. So if you can only rely on what skills people have when they join, you’re going to dilute any proprietary tech you have.
joenot443 2y ago
It's precisely for economic reasons, hiring a qualified team being the long tail here. I assure you guys that it's much, much easier finding a team of decent web devs than a team of decent Windows devs. Is that really so far-fetched?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- usef- 2y ago
  I assume you're right, but it's still quite absurd. Apple has recently released applications written natively in WinUI (iCloud for Windows). So Apple can more easily hire/train WinUI developers than Microsoft? I'd accept the "difficulty" excuse from a company like Walmart. But we're talking about a (relatively) small number of built-in mini applications here, inside a tech-specialised company that created, maintains and presumably promotes this native framework.

pjmlp 2y ago

Only in alternative universe, or by Web developers that never wrote a Windows application.

joenot443 2y ago
Well that's just the thing, I would assume there are significantly more web developers in the market than developers with experience writing Windows apps of a high enough quality to be shipped in the OS.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Yet, there are plenty of native applications around.
  - vitorgrs 2y ago
    You also need to follow all the Windows guidelines pattern here.... The only choice for this for a while was WinUI/UWP. And there isn't a lot of WinUI/UWP devs.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Oh, boy, there is plenty of choice again showing lack of knowledge.
      - vitorgrs 2y ago
        Which choice?

skywhopper 2y ago

For someone with no training on Windows tech, using no helper tools, but who has lots of experience using web tech, maybe. But not only is that not true with the right skills and tools, but these webapps don’t even have feature parity. If they can’t do everything a native app can do then it’s not even a comparison.

dagw 2y ago

My understanding is that it takes orders of magnitude longer to develop native Windows applications than it does to develop webapps. If you know what you are doing, not at all. That being said the technologies are quite different and not all skills are transferrable. If you're an experienced web developer, then transferring to writing Windows apps takes a bit of getting used to. Once you've wrapped your head around C#, Visual Studio and WPF or WinUI3, and embraced the Window Way, it's actually a quite productive environment. What I suspect we might be seeing is that Windows has so thoroughly lost the developer mindshare battle, that not even Microsoft can find experienced Windows devs to hire, and most of their new developers have a web first programming background and have never used any of the Windows GUI frameworks.

joenot443 2y ago
That's essentially I'm suggesting. I totally agree that in a world where one's team is made up of highly skilled C# developers with lots of experience writing Windows apps, I'm sure productivity is fantastic. In the world which 99% of software teams live in though, the former skillset is far, far rarer than the React/node/Vue etc. toolkit which is a dime a dozen these days. If a fresh team wants to from 0 to functioning product, I still stand by that they'll get it out the door _much_ faster using some agreed upon webstack than they would doing it the Windows Way. Hence the "orders of magnitude" phrasing which others are having trouble with.