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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

The secret was .NET Native and C++/CX.

Contrary to Windows Phones, Android was still mostly JIT compiling, with Dalvik.

Windows Phone 8, used technology from Singularity, .NET Native apps were compiled on the cloud and what was downloaded was MDIL (Machine Dependent IL), on device only linking was performed.

Starting with Windows 10, everything was done on cloud and you got a binary targeted to device.

Android had to go through AOT compiler in version 5, 6, reintroduction of JIT with AOT on idle on 7, staring of PGO data across devices on 8, until it got into a similar kind of performance.

And to this day, NDK sucks compared with Windows Phone 8 C++/CX experience.

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Windows 8 Inbox apps a lot of them where WinJS actually. But on Windows 8 even web tech was fine (speed-wise).

And WP 8.0 < didn't offer AOT for .NET apps. AoT only came as experimental on WP 8.1 with WinRT apps if I recall right. And on W10 and W10 Mobile, it comes as default for all UWP .NET apps.

I failed to mention WinJS, because hardly anyone used it, hence why it was dropped on UWP, with the WinRT API surface reboot on Windows 10.

Windows 8 had definitely MDIL support, with the Bartok linker from Singularity.

Thankfully the information hasn't yet fully disappeared from Internet.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11199234/compiling-windo...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-details-its-strategy...

.NET Native was experimental in WP 8.1 and W8. On 10, it becomes mandatory and you couldn't even publish a JIT .NET app to Store.

WP 8.0 didn't even had WinRT, only Silverlight apps, and all JIT. If you wanted native in 8.0, had to go with C++.

About Desktop, C++ was rarely used. Most apps were either .NET C# (JIT) or WinJS. JIT WinRT .NET was super slow, WinJS apps were even faster, which is why many apps were all WinJS, including inbox Windows apps, like the MSN apps.

I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT .NET NATIVE!

Some people really have very selective reading capabilities.

"When you build your app in Visual Studio, the code is not compiled into a native image, but into a machine-independent Common Intermediate Language (CIL) binary file. (CIL was formerly known as Microsoft Intermediate Language, or MSIL.) This CIL file is what you submit to the Store when you’re ready to sell your app. At that time, the binary file is converted from CIL to optimized Machine Dependent Intermediate Language, or MDIL. Finally, when the user downloads your app to a device, the MDIL file is linked to produce a native image. These steps are repeated in your development environment whenever you deploy your app to a Windows Phone 8 device.

Pity that the Channel 9 videos on MDIL for Windows Phone 8 are no longer around.

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