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MS has unfortunately now fallen greatly from that, and gotten onto the same aggressive and hostile trendchasing practices as the rest of Big Tech. Only their le

MS has unfortunately now fallen greatly from that, and gotten onto the same aggressive and hostile trendchasing practices as the rest of Big Tech. Only their legacy keeps them from totally losing the market at this point.

pjmlp 2y ago
As someone that bought into WinRT, saw it as .NET 1.0 done right, and went through all the technology reboots between Windows 8 and WinUI 3.0/WinAppSDK, I can only double down on that remark. It was gone so bad that most Windows developers, me included, advise focusing on Win32/Windows Forms/WPF, at BUILD 2024 WPF got back into the spotlight as official Windows GUI framework (WinUI 3.0 keeps being years away from feature parity with UWP, let alone WPF), even Office and XBox teams rather reach out to React Native than bothering to make XAML C++ in WinUI 3.0 work. Check the agenda for BUILD 2025, hardly anything related WinUI 3.0 / WinAppSDK. And if you want to have some fun, come around into the Github discussion issues from all the related repos.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  It doesn't seem like Microsoft and Anders Hejlsberg understand what they did when they picked Go over any dotnet language for the Typescript compiler. Anders and his fans insist it was merely picking the right tool for the job but when even the father of C# prefers using Go, combined with Microsoft's tendency to get old technology rot instead of officially cancelling, it sends a very bad message about the future of dotnet. No one wants the shitshow that has been Microsoft's desktop UI over the past decade to spread into the rest of the dotnet ecosystem but most are wary of it happening. Anders was the very last person in the company who should have been the face of the Typescript compiler project using Go. Many have pointed this out but just get shouted down by those haven't had to endure the UI framework pain that the company has put developers through over the past ten to fifteen years. Microsoft officially is completely behind dotnet and is committed to its continued success. Same message they've given for all their UI frameworks. The only difference being dotnet still gets lots of resources but so did all of the frameworks before they were left to rot from resource and leadership starvation.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Indeed, it is one of my favourite ecosystems, however I have always been a generalist, I can't get stuck into being a XYZ Developer for too long. As such I get what it means to be in a Microsoft shop, in a UNIX shop, in those that don't care, that use a mix of stacks whatver. The .NET team has made great achievements turning the ship around from Windows only into a cross platform product. However occasionally when they complain on social media, why despite all this effort, there is still some issues getting .NET adoption over Go, Rust, Java, Python, nodejs, you name it, they should start inside Redmond buildings. DevDiv nowadays is no long .NET and C++, regardless of .NET came to be, Microsoft has seen it needs to be back into Java game and even has their own OpenJDK distro. The initial implementation of VSCode support for Go was done by Microsoft, and nowadays they have their own Go distro. While the .NET team makes great developments to ease cloud native development, the projects Azure works on and contributes to CNCF are a mix of Go and Rust for th most part. As for the UI side, from what I can tell, been part of the receiving end, most of the key developers are gone, the new blood are all millennials that grew up with macOS, Linux and Chromebooks, naturally no background experience on Windows developer ecosystem, and strong focus on Web development. Naturally they aren't to blame, they know what they know, what apparently is missing is proper managment, resources and guidance, so that they can deliver to what used to be "Developers, Developers, Developers".
    - exceptione 2y ago
      The smartest thing Microsoft could do, imho, is cancel all their billion UI variants, bless Avalonia and throw all the saved millions of dollars to them. Then in one instant they get a real cross-platform UI framework, with a competent team as a free bonus. It is actually incredibly compelling, the cross-platform .NET offering. If you look at all the Go, Python and Rust UI toolkits, none hits the bar. They invariably write their own toy framework with 2 components, or they duct tape a leaking C++ toolkit on top with bad interop.
      - mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Linux distros are rewriting their installers and partition tools in web technologies these days. Hard to believe but the direction is clear, no one cares about local UI toolkits.
- neonsunset 2y ago
  FWIW WinRT / WinUI 3 was ported onto NativeAOT (9). There is are greater ongoing efforts[0] to make the two play nice together from the people working in Windows. But I think it's just efforts from specific individuals who care and the outcome solely relies on their motivation and continued employment, and is not facilitated by the org or its culture in any way, if anything, it happens despite it. [0]: For example https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/114024 https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/114024
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Yes, those individuals have been great contributors and kudos to them, but it is visible, specially from the last community call how things have been going.

pjmlp 2y ago

As someone that bought into WinRT, saw it as .NET 1.0 done right, and went through all the technology reboots between Windows 8 and WinUI 3.0/WinAppSDK, I can only double down on that remark. It was gone so bad that most Windows developers, me included, advise focusing on Win32/Windows Forms/WPF, at BUILD 2024 WPF got back into the spotlight as official Windows GUI framework (WinUI 3.0 keeps being years away from feature parity with UWP, let alone WPF), even Office and XBox teams rather reach out to React Native than bothering to make XAML C++ in WinUI 3.0 work. Check the agenda for BUILD 2025, hardly anything related WinUI 3.0 / WinAppSDK. And if you want to have some fun, come around into the Github discussion issues from all the related repos.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
It doesn't seem like Microsoft and Anders Hejlsberg understand what they did when they picked Go over any dotnet language for the Typescript compiler. Anders and his fans insist it was merely picking the right tool for the job but when even the father of C# prefers using Go, combined with Microsoft's tendency to get old technology rot instead of officially cancelling, it sends a very bad message about the future of dotnet. No one wants the shitshow that has been Microsoft's desktop UI over the past decade to spread into the rest of the dotnet ecosystem but most are wary of it happening. Anders was the very last person in the company who should have been the face of the Typescript compiler project using Go. Many have pointed this out but just get shouted down by those haven't had to endure the UI framework pain that the company has put developers through over the past ten to fifteen years. Microsoft officially is completely behind dotnet and is committed to its continued success. Same message they've given for all their UI frameworks. The only difference being dotnet still gets lots of resources but so did all of the frameworks before they were left to rot from resource and leadership starvation.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Indeed, it is one of my favourite ecosystems, however I have always been a generalist, I can't get stuck into being a XYZ Developer for too long. As such I get what it means to be in a Microsoft shop, in a UNIX shop, in those that don't care, that use a mix of stacks whatver. The .NET team has made great achievements turning the ship around from Windows only into a cross platform product. However occasionally when they complain on social media, why despite all this effort, there is still some issues getting .NET adoption over Go, Rust, Java, Python, nodejs, you name it, they should start inside Redmond buildings. DevDiv nowadays is no long .NET and C++, regardless of .NET came to be, Microsoft has seen it needs to be back into Java game and even has their own OpenJDK distro. The initial implementation of VSCode support for Go was done by Microsoft, and nowadays they have their own Go distro. While the .NET team makes great developments to ease cloud native development, the projects Azure works on and contributes to CNCF are a mix of Go and Rust for th most part. As for the UI side, from what I can tell, been part of the receiving end, most of the key developers are gone, the new blood are all millennials that grew up with macOS, Linux and Chromebooks, naturally no background experience on Windows developer ecosystem, and strong focus on Web development. Naturally they aren't to blame, they know what they know, what apparently is missing is proper managment, resources and guidance, so that they can deliver to what used to be "Developers, Developers, Developers".
  - exceptione 2y ago
    The smartest thing Microsoft could do, imho, is cancel all their billion UI variants, bless Avalonia and throw all the saved millions of dollars to them. Then in one instant they get a real cross-platform UI framework, with a competent team as a free bonus. It is actually incredibly compelling, the cross-platform .NET offering. If you look at all the Go, Python and Rust UI toolkits, none hits the bar. They invariably write their own toy framework with 2 components, or they duct tape a leaking C++ toolkit on top with bad interop.
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      Linux distros are rewriting their installers and partition tools in web technologies these days. Hard to believe but the direction is clear, no one cares about local UI toolkits.
neonsunset 2y ago
FWIW WinRT / WinUI 3 was ported onto NativeAOT (9). There is are greater ongoing efforts[0] to make the two play nice together from the people working in Windows. But I think it's just efforts from specific individuals who care and the outcome solely relies on their motivation and continued employment, and is not facilitated by the org or its culture in any way, if anything, it happens despite it. [0]: For example https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/114024 https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/114024
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Yes, those individuals have been great contributors and kudos to them, but it is visible, specially from the last community call how things have been going.