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Comment by m0ther | Hacker News Reader

I agree with this.

I was skeptical about WPF at first, as I didn't like XAML at all. I'm happy I stuck with it. Under XAML is a really elegant engine that you can interface with directly (few of my WPF projects have any XAML in them at all).

I skipped UWP for the same reasons as OP, and because you can't (as far as I have been able to figure out) distribute windows services with it. Win2D looked like an answer to a lot of my design issues, but I got a sense that the team building and maintaining it was smaller than mine.

If Microsoft heavily re-invested in the desktop I would be very happy.

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The problem of WPF in my opinion is the absence of strong typing (all binding is based on magic strings) and the fact that if you want to customise a little bit a control you are left rewriting it from scratch. WPF could be a lot better and easier to use than it is.

That binding system is XAML specific. If you bypass XAML, you bypass the magic string binding as well.

I found interfaces a lot easier to build when I ditched the declarative markup and interfaced with the control system directly. XAML as far as I can tell was introduced as an attempt to woo web developers; but it's a thin layer ON TOP of WPF. It seems like a lot of people believe it IS WPF. WPF goes very deep.

The same thing happens on UWP. People see XAML and thing that UWP is just that.

I thought UWP Desktop Bridge might allow enough desktop access to support packaging a Windows service. Nope, the Bridge is not designed for that purpose and Windows services are explicitly not allowed. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/desktop...

Elsewhere the docs talk about registering background tasks through another interface, but it seems like proper integration with services is a legitimate use case for people trying to embrace the blessed desktop path.

The desktop bridge is only thought as a way to package legacy desktop applications as a stepping stone to port them into fully UWP ones.

That is the workflow all Microsoft sessions about it focus on.

I think you can do the other way, too! A UWP app, + Win32 project app with service, full trust capabilities declared on manifest of this project then.

You can distribute UWP services on Server, tho! I believe it's just a matter of time when it comes to Desktop, they are just being extremely cautious to implement on the right way.

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