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Comment by M8 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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