4 ms·

What this says to me as a developer in the Microsoft ecosystem (admittedly, enterprise side and not mobile): "Four years ago we had you writing all your apps u

What this says to me as a developer in the Microsoft ecosystem (admittedly, enterprise side and not mobile): "Four years ago we had you writing all your apps using Silverlight. Two years ago we chucked that out the window (ahahahaha) and told you to switch over to WinRT. Now we're going Android. We hope you've got the message by now. But in case you haven't, let us restate it in plain English: Dear developers, GO THE @$#!% AWAY."

pling 12y ago
It doesn't say that to me. It says: "Nokia baggage". That is all. Either way, I'm not writing another damn mobile app or picking up another damn smartphone again. It's all totally crazy bananas now. I'd rather write win32 again with a broken-ass compiler.
- chucknelson 12y ago
  Make your fantasy a (simulated) reality. With current trends you'd probably be best served by creating "win32js".
  - yellowapple 12y ago
    "It's like WINE, but it runs in your browser and at a whole 1/10 native speed!"
  - pling 12y ago
    That's actually pretty funny! I'm with Bob Pease at the moment: "My favourite programming language is solder".
  - Aldo_MX 12y ago
    Yes please!!! I want to play old Windows Games in my browser in my Windows PC... Oh wait...
zanny 12y ago
I think the real message is: "Hey, we're a company. We have things. That doesn't mean users use our things, or that developing for said things is going make you money or a userbase. That requires looking at the market and seeing where users are." They create the supply side. If there is no demand, blindly working in their tools is just a silly mistake. I think it has been plainly demonstrated nothing Windows Phone offers entices the mobile market away from Android en masse at this point.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  In part, that's because of the poor app ecosystem. I've been very interested in Windows Phone as a mobile platform, but there's just too much stuff I've come to rely on my phone for that a Windows Phone doesn't do because there aren't any apps. And part of the reason for the poor app ecosystem is that they've actively discouraged developers from developing for their platform. Heck, there's a huge number Android and iOS apps that are written in C# using Xamarin, and are therefore theoretically very easy to port to Windows Phone, but haven't for reasons as basic as the developers not wanting to upgrade to Windows 8.
  - declan 12y ago
    Not sure why the above comment was downvoted -- it seems to make a sensible point. (Though I don't know if I'd agree with "actively discouraged.") If I were Microsoft, I'd give significant $$$ to folks who have created cross-platform app development platforms. Then I can improve the number of Windows Phone apps pretty quickly. I may not get apps optimized for my platform, but at least I'd have something, and then I could offer additional incentives for optimization. That's what Amazon is doing with the Fire phone and developer credits. Xamarin would be one example, and PhoneGap (or whatever it's called now) can probably be made far nicer and faster. Last year Microsoft did announce a partnership with Corona, but as far as I know nothing has come of it yet in terms of a public release of the SDK: http://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/10/29/windows-phone-8-and-windows-store-support-coming-to-corona-sdk-in-2014/ http://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/10/29/windows-phone-8-and-wi...
    - 12y ago
fidotron 12y ago
If anything Google and Apple have contracted this disease too. If you're an Android dev you constantly have the Chrome group telling you to use web technologies instead of developing native apps, it's utterly incoherent. Apple aren't quite so bad, but they only get away with things like the iOS 7 UI change because so many of the people in that ecosystem are (I'm not knocking this) obsessed with stylistic consistency and will jump when Apple say so.
- josephlord 12y ago
  Apple get away with for several reasons. People being "obsessed with stylistic consistency" is way down the list. Much higher is the fact that free updates are available to all users of recent products.
ossreality 12y ago
" But in case you haven't, let us restate it in plain English: Dear developers, GO THE @$#!% AWAY."" You haven't been paying attention for the last 6-8 months then. I can assure you 100%, everything we are doing right now is about appealing to devs and "winning" by building a platform devs WANT to build for.
ntakasaki 12y ago
>Four years ago we had you writing all your apps using Silverlight.Two years ago we chucked that out the window (ahahahaha) The runaway success of the iPad killed Silverlight and even much more stronger plugins like Flash. I am glad they killed yet another proprietary browser plugin. Plus, Silverlight XAML is very similar to WinRT and Windows Phone.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  Not entirely. A huge percentage of iOS apps are written using Flash. The iPad (and HTML5) did kill Silverlight and Flash (to some extent) as browser plugins, but not as platforms in general. Flash seems to be hanging in there outside of the browser plugin space, and Silverlight died because Microsoft thinks it's more fun to respond to market challenges by sweeping everything off the table and into the dustbin than it is to just pivot and keep moving forward. Here's an alternative strategy that I strongly suspect would have been less expensive for Microsoft in terms of both development cost and social capital: Keep Silverlight as the mobile development API, and carry it forward as the platform for developing on both WP8 and Windows tablets. Pay Xamarin to incorporate support into their dev tools. Deal with performance considerations by expediting the AOT compiler for .NET, which clearly ended up needing to happen anyway. Deal with cross-language goals by . . . wait, you're still on .NET, cross-language is one of its core competencies. No need to sink resources into developing yet another iteration of COM, so that's a huge time saver. And as an free bonus, take advantage of the fact that Silverlight's already got an OS X implementation to let your developers use the technology to ship cross-platform desktop apps, similar to what Adobe's doing with Air.
sp332 12y ago
They're not moving to Android. RT is still right where it was.
jbigelow76 12y ago
Silverlight and RT are both viable development platforms for building Windows (Phone or otherwise). Watch some of the sessions from Build[1], both platforms got a lot of love actually. http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014

pling 12y ago

It doesn't say that to me. It says: "Nokia baggage". That is all. Either way, I'm not writing another damn mobile app or picking up another damn smartphone again. It's all totally crazy bananas now. I'd rather write win32 again with a broken-ass compiler.

chucknelson 12y ago
Make your fantasy a (simulated) reality. With current trends you'd probably be best served by creating "win32js".
- yellowapple 12y ago
  "It's like WINE, but it runs in your browser and at a whole 1/10 native speed!"
- pling 12y ago
  That's actually pretty funny! I'm with Bob Pease at the moment: "My favourite programming language is solder".
- Aldo_MX 12y ago
  Yes please!!! I want to play old Windows Games in my browser in my Windows PC... Oh wait...

zanny 12y ago

I think the real message is: "Hey, we're a company. We have things. That doesn't mean users use our things, or that developing for said things is going make you money or a userbase. That requires looking at the market and seeing where users are." They create the supply side. If there is no demand, blindly working in their tools is just a silly mistake. I think it has been plainly demonstrated nothing Windows Phone offers entices the mobile market away from Android en masse at this point.

bunderbunder 12y ago
In part, that's because of the poor app ecosystem. I've been very interested in Windows Phone as a mobile platform, but there's just too much stuff I've come to rely on my phone for that a Windows Phone doesn't do because there aren't any apps. And part of the reason for the poor app ecosystem is that they've actively discouraged developers from developing for their platform. Heck, there's a huge number Android and iOS apps that are written in C# using Xamarin, and are therefore theoretically very easy to port to Windows Phone, but haven't for reasons as basic as the developers not wanting to upgrade to Windows 8.
- declan 12y ago
  Not sure why the above comment was downvoted -- it seems to make a sensible point. (Though I don't know if I'd agree with "actively discouraged.") If I were Microsoft, I'd give significant $$$ to folks who have created cross-platform app development platforms. Then I can improve the number of Windows Phone apps pretty quickly. I may not get apps optimized for my platform, but at least I'd have something, and then I could offer additional incentives for optimization. That's what Amazon is doing with the Fire phone and developer credits. Xamarin would be one example, and PhoneGap (or whatever it's called now) can probably be made far nicer and faster. Last year Microsoft did announce a partnership with Corona, but as far as I know nothing has come of it yet in terms of a public release of the SDK: http://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/10/29/windows-phone-8-and-windows-store-support-coming-to-corona-sdk-in-2014/ http://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/10/29/windows-phone-8-and-wi...
  - 12y ago

fidotron 12y ago

If anything Google and Apple have contracted this disease too. If you're an Android dev you constantly have the Chrome group telling you to use web technologies instead of developing native apps, it's utterly incoherent. Apple aren't quite so bad, but they only get away with things like the iOS 7 UI change because so many of the people in that ecosystem are (I'm not knocking this) obsessed with stylistic consistency and will jump when Apple say so.

josephlord 12y ago
Apple get away with for several reasons. People being "obsessed with stylistic consistency" is way down the list. Much higher is the fact that free updates are available to all users of recent products.

ossreality 12y ago

" But in case you haven't, let us restate it in plain English: Dear developers, GO THE @$#!% AWAY."" You haven't been paying attention for the last 6-8 months then. I can assure you 100%, everything we are doing right now is about appealing to devs and "winning" by building a platform devs WANT to build for.

ntakasaki 12y ago

>Four years ago we had you writing all your apps using Silverlight.Two years ago we chucked that out the window (ahahahaha) The runaway success of the iPad killed Silverlight and even much more stronger plugins like Flash. I am glad they killed yet another proprietary browser plugin. Plus, Silverlight XAML is very similar to WinRT and Windows Phone.

bunderbunder 12y ago
Not entirely. A huge percentage of iOS apps are written using Flash. The iPad (and HTML5) did kill Silverlight and Flash (to some extent) as browser plugins, but not as platforms in general. Flash seems to be hanging in there outside of the browser plugin space, and Silverlight died because Microsoft thinks it's more fun to respond to market challenges by sweeping everything off the table and into the dustbin than it is to just pivot and keep moving forward. Here's an alternative strategy that I strongly suspect would have been less expensive for Microsoft in terms of both development cost and social capital: Keep Silverlight as the mobile development API, and carry it forward as the platform for developing on both WP8 and Windows tablets. Pay Xamarin to incorporate support into their dev tools. Deal with performance considerations by expediting the AOT compiler for .NET, which clearly ended up needing to happen anyway. Deal with cross-language goals by . . . wait, you're still on .NET, cross-language is one of its core competencies. No need to sink resources into developing yet another iteration of COM, so that's a huge time saver. And as an free bonus, take advantage of the fact that Silverlight's already got an OS X implementation to let your developers use the technology to ship cross-platform desktop apps, similar to what Adobe's doing with Air.

sp332 12y ago

They're not moving to Android. RT is still right where it was.

jbigelow76 12y ago

Silverlight and RT are both viable development platforms for building Windows (Phone or otherwise). Watch some of the sessions from Build[1], both platforms got a lot of love actually. http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014