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Comment by DonnyV | Hacker News Reader

I've been burned way too many times with Microsoft and there technology. I suggest that no one build any long lasting apps with this. They will dump it when something new and shiny comes along. Unless its based on C# or uses Visual Studio don't use it.

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I now work at Microsoft, but was previously a long time developer in the Microsoft ecosystem (primarily C++). I would be the last guy to disagree with your experience and I am telling everyone who will listen internally what it was like to be on the outside.

But the Typescript project has some things going for it:

1. It's open source.

2. It's closely aligned with EC6, the upcoming Javascript standard.

3. It's compatible with existing Javascript libraries.

4. It's useful as it is, to add type checking to Javascript. It doesn't require a massive growing ecosystem to remain viable.

5. The compiler outputs standard idiomatic Javascript, which you could take and run with if you no longer wanted Typescript.

And, yes, there's a Visual Studio plugin for it if that's your cup of tea.

> And, yes, there's a Visual Studio plugin for it if that's your cup of tea.

Only if you are lucky enough to be using 2012 already.

You can use Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web, which is no cost. Older VS's you can of course launch the command line compiler. The generated Javascipt is not mangled and is quite debuggable.

I've been using Vim and the browsers' F12.

That might work in a startup, not in an enterprise environment where your computer image is controlled regularly by IT and all software requires approval before use.

It is itself a Javascript program. You can use Typescript in a browser. I once had it working on Windows RT via cscript.exe.

The whole issue was about the development environment experience, not how to execute it.

Microsoft is no different than any other commercial vendor in terms of tooling.

Ouch. Can you give me some examples? A lot of companies have this issue: Google and Apple both dump tech left and right. If it's open source software and it's popular, though, there's a good chance the community will make sure it sticks around.

You should call Microsoft and tell them what they will do in the future. They could use a person with your powers of prediction.

Microsoft didn't kill Silverlight, the iPad killed Silverlight. As for VB6, I think many here would agree that it was better off killed. You can still run VB6 apps on even Windows 8 though.

Which itself could be traced back to Adobe trying to make Flash -> native iOS a thing. Apple's process is too expensive to manage the flood of games that would come from that.

I disagree. Microsoft killed Silverlight. Your iPad argument means that we should all just skip native development and stick with HTML5.

Either Silverlight or WPF should be the favored Windows desktop development environment. Instead, they are both EOL and the incomplete Metro environment is the current way to do Windows desktop development.

In fact, if you are a Microsoft developer, you've lost Win32, MFC, ATL, WinForms, WPF, and Silverlight. The Windows desktop developer currently is waiting to see how Metro improves.

All of those kits still work though and will continue to work for a long, long time. More than a decade, probably two. And...at least 3 of them are better kits than the unholy triumvirate of html, js and css.

As a developer in the Microsoft ecosystem - I have lost nothing and only gained new choices at each turn of events. That's because we run Windows internally and so do all of our clients and partners. Now tell me which one of those kits I can't use to build an app for them?

Windows RT is DOA so I'm safely ignoring Metro and it's lame sandbox...at least until general purpose computers are outlawed :)

Um... Without Win32 there is no WinRT (do you think Windows isn't Windows anymore because of the advent of a new touch-first user experience and app model (with a centralized app store with simple and predictable app install/uninstall/update mechanics)?)

Without Win32 there is no Windows shell, touch first or not... There is no Visual Studio, Office, Photoshop, Premiere, etc, etc... You can have something new, different and still have what has always been there. This is what compatibility is all about... Can you run Windows 7 (and Windows XP) applications on Windows 8? Yes, of course you can.

Don't mistake the things you can't do in the WinRT environment (Win32 APIs you can't call, for example) with the end of those things (and what they are a part of)... MFC shipped a new version in 2012. WPF is at version 4.5. ATL is just a "high" level way to program COM just like WinRT, in fact... You don't need ATL any time you program to a COM-based ABI. You don't need WPF to build XAML-based WinRT apps. On x86 machines, there is a desktop for a reason and the reason is the same as it's always been.

> In fact, if you are a Microsoft developer, you've lost Win32, MFC, ATL, WinForms, WPF, and Silverlight.

Funny on my installed Visual Studio I can create projects for all those technologies. How have I lost them?

Microsoft killed Silverlight like Adobe killed Flash. Ipad killed nothing. And it is not the first product MS kills. they did it and will do again and again ,... that's the price to pay when relying on closed technologies.

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