What's wrong with XAML and what could have replace it?
Maybe HTML?
Maybe HTML?
I like it because it's relatively easy to make half-decent-looking UI's that have excellent functionality. If you need bigger guns, there's some powerful libraries you can use for more polished UI's or you can roll your own with a lot of effort and a long learning curve. For corporate in-house apps, it's hard to beat WPF/XAML.
The same is simply NOT true for anything web-based. I see it is getting better with CSS grid. At least layout is becoming sane-r than the days of tables, flex-box, and bootstrap-everything. But you still have house-of-cards javascript library dependencies on a boat-load of complexity. I realize that the folks who do web-apps day-in-day-out see it differently.
I also remember the winform days when people could make ridiculously elaborate high-function UI's with breath-taking speed. These would look ugly and dated by today's standards (especially on today's high-resolution monitors), but that development speed, the ability to just execute what you want quickly, is sadly missing today. WPF/XAML comes close but that winforms speed is just gone. Unless you want to do winforms-- which you CAN if you really want to, along with wearing double-knit polyester pants with bell-bottoms.
Issues with XAML:
- verbose
- static (not good fit for dynamic UIs)
- templating is unnecessarily complex
- contains code-like constructs (behaviors, convertors)
- being a separate language forces constant mental context switching when developing, which is bad for productivity. Tooling is more complex and breaks more often (like Intellisense issues)
The only good thing that XAML does is separates UI from the model, but you really don't need a separate language to do that.
What would you say are the benefits of XAML that warrant using another language for UI?
I think the main reason is they wanted a declarative language along side their imperative language. You don't necessarily need to recompile anything to get a layout drawn in an editor with XAML.
With XAML I can make my ideas fly, with Web, despite doing Web since 1998, I rather let our designer do their magic with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, turning <div> into animated drop downs.