> The GUI system, especially with the "Gadgets" subsystem, is mind-blowing. It would take too long to go over it at the moment, but there are features there that still haven't made it into mainstream GUI systems.
Have you seen Delphi?
Have you seen Delphi?
When I said these features still haven't made it into mainstream GUI systems I didn't mean that they weren't represented at all. But Delphi is an app rather than a built-in part of the OS/GUI. OLE was in Windows, but it didn't really take off AFAIK. Smalltalk integrated GUIs (Pharo, Squeak, etc.) are very similar, albeit with a very different language and runtime architecture, but again, Smalltalk didn't break into widespread mainstream adoption.
After the Windows team successfully sabotaged Longhorn efforts, they went on replicating the .NET designs for Longhorn in COM instead.
So since Vista all major Windows APIs are COM, and WinRT is basically a marketing name for COM 2.0.
Why did they do that?
Longhorn's goals was to rebuild Windows on top of .NET, naturally there were performance issues with the state of .NET 2.0 capabilities.
However instead of working together , while improving the whole stack (languages and runtime) to make it possible, like Google teams have later done with Android and ChromeOS, they just deemed it impossible and started pushing for a reboot.
When Sinfosky of the Office team took charge (another C++ holdout at MS), they picked up all the Longhorn's ideas redoing them in COM.
It is no surprise how WinRT turned out to be COM 2.0 with him in charge of Windows 8.
https://hackernoon.com/what-really-happened-with-vista-4ca7f...
"Turning to the past to power Windows’ future: An in-depth look at WinRT"
https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt...
BTW your article you link to above is awesome!