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Look, I despise Windows and no longer use or program for it, but it is ignorant to say that GUI programming in Windows is still stuck in 1995. XAML adds a decla

by joubert 17y ago

Look, I despise Windows and no longer use or program for it, but it is ignorant to say that GUI programming in Windows is still stuck in 1995. XAML adds a declarative interface to WPF control instantiation, and the out-of-the-box WPF controls are more powerful than most other GUI toolkits, including HTML.

moe 17y ago
In my expirience the the mix of XML and code quickly grows into a worse situation than just having a decent programming API in first place. In Flex, which also sports a declarative layer, most seasoned developers seem to try to avoid it as much as possible - because it gets in the way when complexity grows. Same story with XUL, which perhaps would feel a little less like broken glass if they had omitted the "X" from the name. But well, I have never coded a win32 GUI, so quite possible XAML really is a step up from what they had before.
- StrawberryFrog 17y ago
  In my expirience the the mix of XML and code quickly grows into a worse situation It depends on how you do it. In any environment, there are ways that scale and ways that don't. We've had very good results (seperation of concerns, plugability, extensiblity, blendability) using the ViewModel pattern, an IOC Container and Command objects. The good part of WPF is that you can do all this, or other things, if you want. The same is not true of Windows forms. WPF enables some nifty ways to scale that are just not there in Windows forms.
- joubert 17y ago
  I'm doing all my current work in Flex and think it is great; If you apply some Cocoa-style discipline to structure, you can achieve stunning results while remaining nimble.
ubernostrum 17y ago
Of course, it's entirely possible that the book being reviewed didn't cover WPF. Maybe it's not fully supported, maybe the authors chose not to cover it, maybe any of a lot of things happened.
- thorax 17y ago
  If it's the book I remember, I believe WPF is in Chapter 9.
miked 17y ago
GvR: "But it hasn't really gotten any less complex to create the simplest of simple UIs." ANY .Net GUI is much simpler than a similar GUI written for the old Microsoft Foundation Class Library.

by joubert 17y ago

moe 17y ago

In my expirience the the mix of XML and code quickly grows into a worse situation than just having a decent programming API in first place. In Flex, which also sports a declarative layer, most seasoned developers seem to try to avoid it as much as possible - because it gets in the way when complexity grows. Same story with XUL, which perhaps would feel a little less like broken glass if they had omitted the "X" from the name. But well, I have never coded a win32 GUI, so quite possible XAML really is a step up from what they had before.

StrawberryFrog 17y ago
In my expirience the the mix of XML and code quickly grows into a worse situation It depends on how you do it. In any environment, there are ways that scale and ways that don't. We've had very good results (seperation of concerns, plugability, extensiblity, blendability) using the ViewModel pattern, an IOC Container and Command objects. The good part of WPF is that you can do all this, or other things, if you want. The same is not true of Windows forms. WPF enables some nifty ways to scale that are just not there in Windows forms.
joubert 17y ago
I'm doing all my current work in Flex and think it is great; If you apply some Cocoa-style discipline to structure, you can achieve stunning results while remaining nimble.

ubernostrum 17y ago

Of course, it's entirely possible that the book being reviewed didn't cover WPF. Maybe it's not fully supported, maybe the authors chose not to cover it, maybe any of a lot of things happened.

thorax 17y ago
If it's the book I remember, I believe WPF is in Chapter 9.

miked 17y ago

GvR: "But it hasn't really gotten any less complex to create the simplest of simple UIs." ANY .Net GUI is much simpler than a similar GUI written for the old Microsoft Foundation Class Library.