Hacker News Reader

Comment by CjHuber | Hacker News Reader

AFAIK the Start Menu itself is still C++ and XAML however only the Recommended section is build with React Native [1]. Funnily or rather sadly, they seem to be quite proud of using it as seen in the video.

1: https://youtu.be/kMJNEFHj8b8?t=4m47s

View on HN

Still in some cases you have to wait a few minutes to get working Start menu search or menu itself on a new not low-end device.

My work computer takes a full five minutes to become usable on the first login after a cold boot, and that’s not even counting the time from boot to entering my password. Before the upgrade from Windows 10, it only took three. Teams, of course, takes another five minutes to become functional. Meanwhile I have a 13 year old low end Asus laptop at home that boots to a fully usable Linux desktop in well under a minute.

It’s been this way for over a decade. The year of the Linux desktop was 2009; the world is only just catching up.

> My work computer takes a full five minutes to become usable on the first login after a cold boot, and that’s not even counting the time from boot to entering my password.

Yeah, that’s a misconfigured system. I bet you can fuck up Linux enough to get a similar experience.

I’ve always been using Windows and the only time I ever had to wait that long was around the Win98 times on slow hardware.

After login, I can instantly use everything on Win 11, and the only delay is a bunch of apps starting (that I chose to start on boot).

A lot of it is probably the shoveled-on layers of enterprise endpoint security bloatware.

I bet stuff like Crowdstrike has a major influence into this. I used my work computer before and after Crowdstrike and the difference in boot time and general behavior is huge.

In the challenges section, they list a few challenges with React Native that they had to overcome. Interesting thing is that MS already has XAML, WinUI etc., that they built and control and don't havr those "challenges". I don't understand what the team got by using React Native compared to using XAML. Anyone from MS here who could provide some technical benefits for this decision?

Maybe being not laid off along with other long-term staff and being part of easy-to-hire easily expendable army of JavaScript / TypeScript developers? XAML etc. are specific skills the developers are rarer and usually paid better than JS/TS devs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com