4 ms·

> Genuine innovation on a platform many had feared was abandoned. Are you equating .NET in general with Silverlight? Honest question.

MichaelGG 13y ago
No, but the way MS came out with WinRT and excluded existing .NET code from executing on it certainly didn't reassure anyone.
- taspeotis 13y ago
  Uh... WinRT excluded all existing third-party code from executing on it. EDIT: asveikau has rightly pointed out I have confused two matters.
  - asveikau 13y ago
    Surely you would not confuse WinRT, the API, with Windows RT, the ARM tablet product. Why, these names are totally unambiguous! (Microsoft is not great at naming products.)
    - Locke1689 13y ago
      I agree :(
- jmcqk6 13y ago
  WinRT was definitely a screw-up, but at this point I don't see it really effecting developers that much. WinRT has pretty much failed as a platform. At this point, is it even worth developer time to deliver an app to that platform? If you're talking about apps in the windows app store (so-called metro-style apps or whatever the current name is), then you're right that it meant throwing out a lot of code, but it's not true that all existing .NET code was excluded. It took some rejiggering. But once again, that's only if you want to deliver via the app store.
  - efdee 13y ago
    I think you might be confusing WinRT with the Surface RT tablets. They have relatively little to do with eachother. For example, the "metro-style apps" you mention are WinRT just as well.
- asveikau 13y ago
  There is a lot to criticize about WinRT, but basing it on COM was the right call. In fact I would say absolutely essential for high-performance apps. Make all the costs of .NET (GC, memory usage, JIT) optional. CLR can still call into COM objects without problems, so all the C# fans can still go nuts. It's hard not to see this as informed by how badly Longhorn failed. Microsoft tried to make .NET the basis of their OS platform during Longhorn and failed miserably, in part because it was simply not built for that. CLR belongs as a layer on top. [Disclaimer: I used to work at MS. Did not work on the Windows Runtime. These are my personal opinions.]
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    That's not what I was questioning - see my other answer for why WinRT was not "reassuring". Now it makes sense, and I can safely not care about WinRT. As far as Longhorn failing, certainly that was both a disaster in management and not just technology. After all, MS Corp felt generics were and impractical academic and theoretical idea that couldn't be properly implemented in a language like C# or the CLR.
    - asveikau 13y ago
      If that's not what you're questioning then IMO don't phrase it as a .NET problem; it is broader than that. There is a pocket of the .NET community that talks as if they shafted .NET in favor of native code, but WinRT is probably more disruptive to the existing Win32/C workflow than it is for people writing C#.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      > After all, MS Corp felt generics were and impractical academic and theoretical idea that couldn't be properly implemented in a language like C# or the CLR. What?! Generics were only added to .NET 2.0, because it wasn't going to be done on time for the .NET 1.0/1.1 releases. There are papers from the .NET Beta days already describing the way generics could be implemented, but additional work was still needed at the time.
      - 13y ago
- pjmlp 13y ago
  I never understood where people got this idea from. You can target WinRT with the usual set of .NET languages, the only difference being the classes one uses. Does C stop being C, if you don't use libc?
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    There's multiple things at play. Until the F# stdlib was ported, F# couldn't target WinRT. Then there's the ton of fanfare JS/HTML were given, and the fact that C#'s development has been moving at a snails pace (and the "face" of C# is now working on making JS suck less) -- eh, it makes people nervous. Plus, MS's messaging wasn't all that clear. Now I see WinRT as being for cutesy tablet apps and I'm not so concerned. But before Win8, there was a lot of confusion going on.
    - pjmlp 13y ago
      > But before Win8, there was a lot of confusion going on. Which was cleared for anyone that cared to access the information available after the BUILD conference. But hey, it is easier to form opinions based in twitter spread rumours, or something like that.

MichaelGG 13y ago

No, but the way MS came out with WinRT and excluded existing .NET code from executing on it certainly didn't reassure anyone.

taspeotis 13y ago
Uh... WinRT excluded all existing third-party code from executing on it. EDIT: asveikau has rightly pointed out I have confused two matters.
- asveikau 13y ago
  Surely you would not confuse WinRT, the API, with Windows RT, the ARM tablet product. Why, these names are totally unambiguous! (Microsoft is not great at naming products.)
  - Locke1689 13y ago
    I agree :(
jmcqk6 13y ago
WinRT was definitely a screw-up, but at this point I don't see it really effecting developers that much. WinRT has pretty much failed as a platform. At this point, is it even worth developer time to deliver an app to that platform? If you're talking about apps in the windows app store (so-called metro-style apps or whatever the current name is), then you're right that it meant throwing out a lot of code, but it's not true that all existing .NET code was excluded. It took some rejiggering. But once again, that's only if you want to deliver via the app store.
- efdee 13y ago
  I think you might be confusing WinRT with the Surface RT tablets. They have relatively little to do with eachother. For example, the "metro-style apps" you mention are WinRT just as well.
asveikau 13y ago
There is a lot to criticize about WinRT, but basing it on COM was the right call. In fact I would say absolutely essential for high-performance apps. Make all the costs of .NET (GC, memory usage, JIT) optional. CLR can still call into COM objects without problems, so all the C# fans can still go nuts. It's hard not to see this as informed by how badly Longhorn failed. Microsoft tried to make .NET the basis of their OS platform during Longhorn and failed miserably, in part because it was simply not built for that. CLR belongs as a layer on top. [Disclaimer: I used to work at MS. Did not work on the Windows Runtime. These are my personal opinions.]
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  That's not what I was questioning - see my other answer for why WinRT was not "reassuring". Now it makes sense, and I can safely not care about WinRT. As far as Longhorn failing, certainly that was both a disaster in management and not just technology. After all, MS Corp felt generics were and impractical academic and theoretical idea that couldn't be properly implemented in a language like C# or the CLR.
  - asveikau 13y ago
    If that's not what you're questioning then IMO don't phrase it as a .NET problem; it is broader than that. There is a pocket of the .NET community that talks as if they shafted .NET in favor of native code, but WinRT is probably more disruptive to the existing Win32/C workflow than it is for people writing C#.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    > After all, MS Corp felt generics were and impractical academic and theoretical idea that couldn't be properly implemented in a language like C# or the CLR. What?! Generics were only added to .NET 2.0, because it wasn't going to be done on time for the .NET 1.0/1.1 releases. There are papers from the .NET Beta days already describing the way generics could be implemented, but additional work was still needed at the time.
    - 13y ago
pjmlp 13y ago
I never understood where people got this idea from. You can target WinRT with the usual set of .NET languages, the only difference being the classes one uses. Does C stop being C, if you don't use libc?
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  There's multiple things at play. Until the F# stdlib was ported, F# couldn't target WinRT. Then there's the ton of fanfare JS/HTML were given, and the fact that C#'s development has been moving at a snails pace (and the "face" of C# is now working on making JS suck less) -- eh, it makes people nervous. Plus, MS's messaging wasn't all that clear. Now I see WinRT as being for cutesy tablet apps and I'm not so concerned. But before Win8, there was a lot of confusion going on.
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    > But before Win8, there was a lot of confusion going on. Which was cleared for anyone that cared to access the information available after the BUILD conference. But hey, it is easier to form opinions based in twitter spread rumours, or something like that.