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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Care to elaborate?

They suddenly stopped actively developing WPF 5 years ago, now it's just some small unimportant team cleaning up the backlog. I went to a conference where Guthrie told us that Silverlight 5 is the future. Less than a year later and he was focused only on ASP and JS. As if it's OK.

You believed that flash's poor cousin will be next big thing? In 2010?

In terms of features it's actually Flash's rich cousin because Silverlight is multi-language (C#, Python, etc) and multi-threaded among many other features.

Do you actually think that HTML, CSS and Javascript are good technologies to build applications on top of compared to something like Silverlight, which is purpose-built for the task?

But flash was already dying at the time. Flash has "died" because web applications had gotten more powerful.

"Do you actually think that HTML, CSS and Javascript are good technologies to build applications on top" Are you serious? I am not saying "the web" is perfect, but this just nonsense.

For native apps? Yes, I think web tech sucks immensely compared to Silverlight.

Unfortunately, the XAML everywhere people lost at Microsoft, so we're stuck with half-baked, kludgy and limited solutions like atom/electron/node-webkit for building cross platform desktop apps. XAML everywhere (Silverlight) is so much more precise and it's compiled. I would have preferred that they continued developing Silverlight at least as a means of building cross platform desktop apps, but I understand why they don't want to expend the energy.

Read the sibling's reply. I was going to say exactly that. See the 2nd sentence in my comment? It's not without meaning.

And my reply to that - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9597857

@LogoThete I work in enterprise and don't care about wider landscape.

I'm not really i really understand that statement. What is enteprise and why can it ignore the wider landscape?

You can use non-legacy non-ubiquitous languages (as opposed to HTML/JS/CSS), because it's not public-facing. Microsoft is sending a mixed message to enterprise: should they bet on HTML5 and possibly quit the MS ecosystem whatsoever, or XAML is still a major investment for Microsoft? They need to demonstrate that WPF/XAML team is more important than ASP/Azure team.

That doesn't make any sense.

Azure and web tech is incredibly important. XAML can be used for desktop apps and store apps...thats been the story for about three years now.

They have said for years that WPF is the way to go if you are writing a desktop app that has rich UI needs.

I really don't understand this kind of thing...was C++ dead even though MFC is only getting minor updates?

Azure is literally the most important thing that the server and tools division is working on. Just because they are developing cloud tools doesn't mean that they wont support desktop apps.

The "mixed message" they have been sending to the enterprise is around licensing. Dev technology changes and this isn't anything new.

Well obviously you can do that, under the assumption that the company you work for is locked down and isn't going to even remotly consider any type of BYOD, you could get away with pushing any tech you want, considering you control the clients.

However, that doesn't mean that you should and if you're going to lock yourself in to a single priopritory vendor, you're doing yourself and the people you work for a disservice if you haven't weighed it against the alternatives.

I highly doubt the GP really meant that, which is what I was really referring to. What is it about "enteprise" which makes them think they're different? Honest question.

So do I and we're very happy with WPF.

This doesn't make any (long term) sense..

You're betting that Microsoft (or any other company) will continue to support all it's api's indefinitely. And when it doesn't, you not caring about a "wider landscape", will bite you.

Silverlight is great example of this, one year it's "the best" (enterprise) technology the next year it's dead. I wonder if it's even officially supported on Windows 10.

Microsoft marketed WPF as the way to make Windows applications going forward. It turned out that it sucked for things like tablets or phones, and everyone cared about tablets and phones. WPF is not exactly abandoned, but people who learned WPF to develop with it are somewhat bitter (and understandably so) about the experience, and about the transition to Windows 8 / phones / tablets.

WPF lives on as...WinRT. I mean, the APIs are 80% identical. WPF also has fairly decent support for touch, what WinRT did was improve performance a lot through a new architecture.

I personally still use WPF for all my development given its richer API. I'm not a big fan of XAML, but WPF has a good basic API for putting stuff on the screen and handling input in C# (disclosure: MS employee, but research).

> but people who learned WPF to develop with it are somewhat bitter

Only those not able to grasp that what matters is the XAML stack, not the little layer that is put on top of it.

WPF is a lot more than just XAML, and you can totally write entire WPF apps without a line of XAML. XAML is mainly useful for tooling and lacks many of the niceties of C# while operating on a DOM that is a bit more complex than HTML. I'm not sure if anyone wants to edit it by hand, which is true of any XML dialect.

I really wish JavaFX Script would have taken off. It provided a nice balance between code and markup.

For me and many other .NET developers I know, speaking about XAML means the whole stack, e.g. XAML, .NET APIs, Blend integration and third party components.

I just tend to abbreviate to XAML when speaking about it.

There changes on the APIs between WPF, WinRT and Silverlight if you will, and not all features are exposed across all stacks.

Yet, any developer knowing XAML, the usual programming idioms and the respective .NET APIs can easily transition among all of them.

This has been mentioned at multiple PDC and BUILD conferences in the last years, but I guess many at HN and Reddit don't follow them.

I just see XAML itself as totally optional, and it is weird to hear it used to represent the entire architecture. One of the reasons I haven't even tried WinRT yet is because it seems much more XAML heavy than classic WPF (it is also missing font metric APIs my programs depend on...). I'm also a bit of a code traditionalist, and find transitioning between the two (markup and code behind) a bit jarring.

Plenty of Microsoft haters on HN, this post has already been flagged or flamed off the front page. Oh well.

That little layer on top is the one beneath their app with which they interact, is it not? I'm really asking, not being a Windows developer but looking to get into it - and being a bit confused as to how to proceed.

It goes like this, back when Longhorn was the codename for Windows Vista, with the big plans of using .NET for everything, the next generation UI engine was named Avalon.

Parts of it eventually became what is known as WPF. The whole set of concepts that it embraces are as follows:

- XML based "language" for describing UI layouts (XAML)

- A set of .NET APIs for buttons, dialogs, windows, and so on

- A set of .NET APIs for manipulating the XAML DOM

- A set of .NET APIs for handling application resources

- A set of abstraction concepts, namely binding, data templates, triggers, MVVM, storyboards

When Silverlight came out, the team responsible for it adapted all these concepts to the platform. Similarly to the WinRT platform.

The main differences are the XML namespaces used by XAML, which expose different set of UI widgets in each platform.

Also some .NET APIs are a bit different as the classes aren't 100% equal across all platforms, e.g. TypeConverters are not available in WinRT.

However those basic concepts originally from Avalon are still there.

WPF was basically html like XML (it had a grid element for one thing) but with all the crap thrown out and native support for two-way binding of values and event which meant it was extremely easy to e.g make a front end to a database but also to make GUIs in general.

Sadly MS seem to have abandoned it.

The "WPF is dead" thing is weird seeing as how you have been able to build an application with supported technology the whole time.

They have tried to fight the impression, but people don't seem to listen.

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