The Longhorn Dream Reborn 254
gbjbaanb writes "Early this month, Microsoft dropped something of a bombshell on Windows developers: the new Windows 8 touch-friendly immersive style would use a developer platform not based on .NET. Cue howls of outrage from .NET developers everywhere, but here Ars Technica describes what's more likely to have been going on and why Microsoft is finally getting its act together for developers."
Standard modus operandi (Score:3, Interesting)
If anything, we should be surprised that anyone's surprised. Whether or not TFA's theory is true, one thing is absolutely clear: .NET, like any Microsoft technology, has an expiration date.
Anyone remember COM, VBX, and other MS-Windows technologies of yesteryear? Or the Visual Basic debacle of more recent vintage. For as long as I can remember, there's been a steady churn of Microsoft technologies, coming and going.
Microsoft makes a lot of money from selling its development tools, documentation, etc... to its developer base. Microsoft simply runs the whole show. They are in full control, and call all the shots. And they understand perfectly well that if they keep the same technology platform in place, over time, they lose a good chunk of their revenue stream. That's why they have to obsolete their technology platforms, time and time again. They need revenue. It makes perfect sense. If you are a Microsoft Windows developer, one of your primary job functions is to generate revenue to Microsoft. Perhaps not from you, directly; maybe from your company. Whoever pays the bills for Visual Studio, MSDN, and all the other development tools. Maybe it's not you, personally, but it's going to be someone, that's for sure.
So, perhaps this is the death knell for .NET. Perhaps not. If not this time, maybe next year. But it's inevitable. It's a certainty. If you are a .NET developer, your skills will be obsolete. If you were a COM developer, or a VB6 developer, your skills became obsolete a long time. I see no reason why .NET developers will escape the same fate. It's only a matter of time, but that's ok: all you have to do is invest some time and money to retrain yourself on the replacement Microsoft Windows technology, whatever it's going to be, when its time comes. But, it'll come.
Originally I came from a Unix background. Many, many moons ago I explored the possibility of boning up on the MS-Windows ways of doing things. But, after a bit of some exploratory peeks and pokes, this became painfully clear to me; that whatever I learned, all of it was going go to waste, in its due time. And that was pretty much the end of my venture into the Windows landscape.
Well, I'm happy to report that read(2), write(2), and all the other syscalls that make up POSIX, and its derivatives, still work the same as they did decades ago. Everything I have learned, as the sands of time have rolled on and on, I still put to good use today, and I make a pretty good living using them. Nothing has gone to waste. Honestly, this is more than I could say for my peers who practice their craft on MS-Windows. A lot -- not everything but a lot -- they learned decades ago is now completely and totally worthless to them, and to anyone else.
So, whether Windows 8 is Longhorn reborn, as TFA says, or not, one thing can be said for certain. .NET is dead. It's just a matter of time. Good luck learning its eventual replacement. Of course, you understand that it'll be dead too, some years after that, of course; just keep that in mind, as you make your long term plans.
Re:Standard modus operandi (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm happy to report that read(2), write(2), and all the other syscalls that make up POSIX, and its derivatives, still work the same as they did decades ago.
Great, so it's dead too since it hasn't changed for decades? Same as with COM, there's nothing stopping you from using it and it still works the same as it did many years ago. You can still use all the old technologies and they still all work just the same as they used to.
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Now compare that t
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Your confusing implementation with interface. read and write's implementation has kept up with the times while maintaining the same interface.
Kept up with the times? So has Win32.
Now compare that to Microsoft who constantly deprecates interfaces which means no new features are ever back ported
Oh come on don't be obtuse, look at MFC, it's nearly 20 years old yet it still gets new features, it even got the new ribbon APIs.
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Of course the technologies still work, but does Microsoft support them? Does Microsoft update them to fit modern needs? Can you get as many jobs writing in them? Can you get jobs other than maintenance jobs in them?
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Of course the technologies still work, but does Microsoft support them?
Well ancient things like COM and MFC are still available in the latest VS and are still supported.
Does Microsoft update them to fit modern needs?
MFC is nearly 20 years old and got all the recent ribbon updates.
Can you get as many jobs writing in them?
I don't know.
Can you get jobs other than maintenance jobs in them?
Of course, you can't find any?
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Why would you think that? We still have files with bytes in them, pipes, sockets, and all the other things these system calls work on. And since we're still working with the same concepts, and we have a good API for them, why would we want to change the API?
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Not true. Allot of the programs need to be run in compatibility mode for a reason.
Because they are either unsafe or have been used incorrectly, so they get run in compatibility mode, but as i said they don't work any differently. Just the same as how apple worked in their technology transition phases.
Not to mention the development environment and so forth do not support it.
Of course the development environment supports it, are you sure you know what COM is?
And what's the 'and so forth'? Is that just an attempt to pad out your argument?
Re:Standard modus operandi (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortunately, free software means that Windows developers can use Win32 approximately forever! On WINE.
I have a theory: like backups, no-one ever really gets the idea of free software until the lack of it has bitten them in the arse, good and hard.
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You have a funny definition of "mainstream". Apache? Java? Firefox? Android? Linux? GCC? Hell, even the "closed" iPhone has free software at it's roots.
Apple was able take a pre-written free kernel and FreeBSD and pop some proprietary shine on it and rival the largest software company in the world on the desktop, and hand them their ass in mobile.
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Re:Standard modus operandi (Score:4, Informative)
You're kinda comparing apples and oranges: on the one hand, MS is trying to provide APIs, libraries features and tools for advanced, maybe even "innovative" features (maybe in misguided ways, but that's not my point), on the other hand, you list almost bare-metal APIs.
As far as I know, these haven"t changed in Windows much either, but most devs simply don't use them.
I'm fully aware that COBOL isn't dead either... It's just not where most of the jobs/money/action is, though I'm sure quite a few people are quite happy working in that space.
all of it was going go to waste (Score:3)
Originally I came from a Unix background. Many, many moons ago I explored the possibility of boning up on the MS-Windows ways of doing things. But, after a bit of some exploratory peeks and pokes, this became painfully clear to me; that whatever I learned, all of it was going go to waste, in its due time. And that was pretty much the end of my venture into the Windows landscape.
I have to disagree, as anything learned is an advantage you can leverage in future learning.. Also, during the time that 'xyz tech' is in vogue, you are employed and making money from it.. that's not a waste in my book..
Re:Standard modus operandi (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Standard modus operandi (Score:4, Funny)
The 2Gb Access Database limit is nature's way of telling you that you should never have used Access for anything in the first place.
Re:Standard modus operandi (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft makes a lot of money from selling its development tools, documentation, etc... to its developer base. Microsoft simply runs the whole show. They are in full control, and call all the shots. And they understand perfectly well that if they keep the same technology platform in place, over time, they lose a good chunk of their revenue stream. That's why they have to obsolete their technology platforms, time and time again. They need revenue. It makes perfect sense. If you are a Microsoft Windows developer, one of your primary job functions is to generate revenue to Microsoft. Perhaps not from you, directly; maybe from your company. Whoever pays the bills for Visual Studio, MSDN, and all the other development tools. Maybe it's not you, personally, but it's going to be someone, that's for sure.
So your argument is that Microsoft intentionally periodically obsoletes languages in order to make money? Am I reading this correctly?
You do understand that:
I think your theory has some holes. Now, Microsoft has definitely obsoleted languages - Visual Basic for one (and good riddance) - but they did that because the language had shortcomings. I'd detail them but we have a nice article that already does that. The .NET framework and language stack, C# in particular, is on the same general level as Java: it is a language that more or less suits the needs of every platform developer. Why the hell would they want to obsolete that?
No, languages aren't the issue with MS development, nor are they the theme of the article; frameworks are. A perfectly good language can be horrendous to use if it is unable to properly interact with its host environment to accomplish what it needs to accomplish. In this case (once again FTFA) C++ could interact worlds better with Windows than .NET could, and so .NET use suffered. This was an implementation failure on Microsoft's part. The article stipulates that Windows 8 intends to bring .NET back on-par with C++ as a development language, which (if true) means that it will be stronger than ever.
It's also worth mentioning that in terms of accumulated skills and experience, learning a new language is trivial compared to truly learning a new framework. How you interact with the system and cause it to give you the resources and services that you want in the manner in which you want them is the heart of all modern systems programming, regardless of language. If Microsoft emphasizes .NET in their APIs, then .NET will be a viable Windows development platform; if not, then who knows? None of that reflects on the language itself, but rather on its appeal over other languages.
Now, eventually every language will be obsoleted ... probably? I suppose we haven't been through that many generations of languages to know for sure, but that seems to be the case so far. There are various reasons languages die ... they suck, better ones come out, nobody likes them, no frameworks support them, or their target developer group gives up on it. .NET's main backer is cu
MSDN Licenses (Score:2)
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However, the article makes the point that Microsoft's .NET framework capabilities are increasing substantially, not decreasing. This speaks positively for its future.
That's true if the desktop stays dominant. With C++, you can write desktop, iPhone, and Android apps (well, you need to learn enough Java/Objective C to do the interfaces)... so I guess if non-windows platforms take off, you might still see .NET wain.
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PS - If not obvious, this is all my own armchair analysis of the situation and it's probably way off base.
Not at all; I totally agree, and the problem is systemic and probably not a bad thing. It's a simple consequence of choice and variety. Different people and companies will take different approaches to solve problems, while several developers may want to solve the same problem for all platforms. Everyone has to meet in the middle.
There are several approaches to the problem. Some involve comprehensive frameworks (QT, Java/Swing, Java/SWT, .NET, Mono, and tons of others), there are attempts to enhance one lang
You defeated your own argument (Score:2)
So your argument is that Microsoft intentionally periodically obsoletes languages in order to make money? Am I reading this correctly?
You do understand that:
Pretty much every commercial MS developer already has an MSDN license, which (minimally) gives them access to the latest development languages, SDKs, and tools.
You do understand that:
MSDN licenses cost a lot of money. Were it not for the constant churn, developers wouldn't need MSDN subscriptions, and could save a a lot of money.
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So your argument is that Microsoft intentionally periodically obsoletes languages in order to make money? Am I reading this correctly?
You do understand that:
Pretty much every commercial MS developer already has an MSDN license, which (minimally) gives them access to the latest development languages, SDKs, and tools.
You do understand that:
MSDN licenses cost a lot of money. Were it not for the constant churn, developers wouldn't need MSDN subscriptions, and could save a a lot of money.
Companies pay for MSDN licenses for a lot more than the latest language. They provide the latest SDKs, documentation, tons of tools, exemplar operating systems, future betas and product (to test and build against), and, of course, a gigantic repository of forum knowledge and a means of engaging Microsoft. Obviously the MSDN / developer model that Microsoft has established is for profit and cash. No shit.
The point I was making is that they don't have to phase out .NET to keep that stream going. Sure, you may
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Hm. Well, .NET isn't a language, of course.
I think the basic point is that Microsoft is constantly obsoleting development tools, requiring upgrades to remain relevant, just like they obsolete software like Office and Windows itself, requiring upgrades, all of which forces the purchasing of new licenses for minor upgrades and changes--some of which aren't even improvements.
Compared to FOSS, which, by and large, doesn't force costly upgrades to remain useful and relevant and secure, and is much more self-sus
Fire and Motion (Score:2)
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What money does Microsoft stand to gain by not releasing IE9 on Windows XP? The most recent version of Visual FoxPro will also be supported through 2015. Asking a company to support old versions indefinitely is probably too much.
Your post is essentially a rambling rant against "evil" Microsoft. I suppose that's why you posted AC...?
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You realise .net is more than a language variant, and that .net objects are pervasive throughout the core of Windows these days - and that every administration tool has been rebuilt to work with Powershell cmdlets and .net objects?
I love seeing anti-microsoft trolls who run decades old operating systems because they refuse to upgrade talking about how the new tech sucks or is being obsoleted because of reason X when its clear they have zero experience with current offerings.
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It wouldn't kill you to actually read the article, you know.
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Microsoft makes a lot of money from selling its development tools, documentation, etc... to its developer base. [..] That's why they have to obsolete their technology platforms, time and time again. They need revenue.
Tinfoil hat ranting. Do you have references to back this up? Microsoft makes the bulk [businessinsider.com] of their money by selling Windows and Office. Do you think they actually want to drive developers away? Note that "Tools" sales are bundled into "Server and Tools", which includes things like SQL Server, so only a tiny portion of Microsoft's profit comes from selling tools, if any.
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I think your sort of missing where .NET was targetted. In my view .NET was never intended to be a replacement to the native C interfaces (MFC, COM, etc) but rather as a way of taking on the Java market for servers and Delphi/VLC market for desktop development, and succeeded in it because Java (at least at the time) was utterly unsuited to agile high turnover development, and Delphi was being tragically mismanaged, priced out of the market and being ignored in favor of utterly wierd "middleware" frameworks t
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Many coders to this day hold Delphi 4 to be one of the most productive environments of all time
I will buy that, in fact I would probably put it ahead of current .net platforms as well. Then there was C++ Builder which was basically delphi with ugly syntax. Either way, M$ started switching their API's to COM even before .net. That was the first major change in the M$ API churn. When that happened I pretty much started to write the native platform off because there wasn't any reason that those API's couldn't
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Dude. It's VCL, not VLC. And Delphi (and it's retarded cousin, C++ Builder) were nice tools, but suffered from a major flaw. The component model was brittle, and required recompilation to change anything. COM and .NET have ways to extend components with multiple interfaces. VCL did not.
This is why, when you look at Delphi and BCB components, you have to buy them for a specific version. This is not true of COM and C++ components.
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No, no, you don't understand. Microsoft does this because they care! Ask any Windows developer :-)
Seriously though, objectively speaking, no matter how ridiculous this technology churn seems to us looking from outside of the Microsoft universe, it does keep people perpetually employed. It feeds not only Microsoft but a huge ecosystem of businesses, consultants, IT experts, MCEs, support stuff, technical book authors, administrators, etc. It is great!
It may look inefficient, but if it was really inefficient,
Unix or Linux is no different (Score:2)
Comparing posix read() and write() to the shifting sands of MS APIs is pretty silly. If you're going to make a comparison to Unix, at least compare apples to apples. So once upon a time I wrote code in C++ with Qt 1.0. Then Qt 2.0 came along, which was mostly compatible, but introduced new features. Then Qt 3, then Qt 4. Some things were deprecated, some things added. Developers had to adapt. Same with Gtk+ 1 to Gtk+ 2. That was a pretty painful leap for developers with several important (but unders
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Anyone remember COM, VBX, and other MS-Windows technologies of yesteryear? Or the Visual Basic debacle of more recent vintage. For as long as I can remember, there's been a steady churn of Microsoft technologies, coming and going.
Well COM is still used as the basic programming interface today. Look at one of the most recent additions to the Windows UI - the Ribbon. According to the Ribbon introduction on MSDN [microsoft.com]:
"The Ribbon framework provides this flexibility by separating functionality from presentation with two distinct development structures: an Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML)-based markup language to declare controls and the visual layout of a Ribbon implementation, and C++ COM-based interfaces to initialize the fram
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Everything I have learned, as the sands of time have rolled on and on, I still put to good use today, and I make a pretty good living using them. Nothing has gone to waste.
Yeah, it's a snap finding those jobs supporting UUCP on Irix. Well, as long as they're COFF binaries and I can telnet or rsh into the box, it's not too bad. I just look at the K&R source with pcat.
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It's a certainty. If you are a .NET developer, your skills will be obsolete.
I disagree. Having been in development for some time now, I've had ample opportunity to observe the various trends in programming and software development. The churn that was more characteristic of many previous technologies, going all the way back to the early mainframes from IBM and others, stemmed in large part from the close association between software and the hardware on which it ran. However, beginning with the rise and popularity of Java and continuing with .NET we see the increasing virtualization
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Re:Standard modus operandi (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a Microsoft employee in DevDiv.
(PS: Buy Visual Studio LightSwitch when it comes out! It rocks!)
I will not comment on the accuracy of what is in the ars article, other than to say: I know the answers to some of the questions they are worried about, and the answers do not worry me and shouldn't worry you either (unless you're a competing non-MS technology, perhaps :))
Regarding your post: I don't see how you'd conclude that .net is going anywhere from the article you supposedly read.
First and foremost, you would need to be specific about what you mean by ".net" for your statement to even make sense. Are you claiming that C#, the language, is on an EOL path? Or the .NET runtime will no longer be a supported way of writing userland apps?
Your claim that we intentionally obsolete developer technologies as some sort of money making scheme is hillarious. Have you worked in the commercial software industry before? Let me explain how it works.
1) we spend a ginormous amount of money paying engineers to make something that we hope developers use.
2) we figure out if its something we can even charge money for, or if we need to give it away so more people will develop for our huge money making platforms (Windows, SQL, Office, Sharepoint)
3) when we have something we can give away / sell for a pittance, we start doing so
4) this is when we might actually start getting money for our efforts.
Now then, if our strategy was to make money at any cost, you'd think that we'd fire all of the engineers and keep selling licenses at the same price indefinitely.
But as you've noted, our engineering staff moves on to new things and eventually the old things get phased out.
We don't start working on new platforms because we need to figure out how to get more money out of existing customers. We work on new platforms because we think they'll be better than the old ones; that customers will like them more; that they'll provide more value to everyone. There are all kinds of features and products we'd LIKE to put out there in the real world but they all cost us more money to do. And as you've noted, everything we release causes someone to get upset if we want to stop supporting years later. For every one of these developer technologies we ship, we end up supporting it for years after we're not selling it (and thus not getting new revenue). Our support life cycle is a hell of a lot longer than Apples, or any of the for-pay Linux distros, for instance.
Finally, regarding what a huge revenue stream deveopers tools are for us... I've never come across anyone in Windows or Office who is worried their project is going to be killed and their staff moved onto a _real_ money making project like the F# compiler :)
Sure, DevDiv does great revenue compared to a lot of entire companies. But look who we're competing against. I'm not sure we've ever sold 300 million seats ever, counting everything we do. Windows does that _every release_.
(nothing against the F# compiler guys. I just picked something :))
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What are you talking about? COM is far from dead, and still represents a very important core technology on Windows. It's very mature now, even though it doesn't get nor need much hype or attention. It's a language neutral binary spec that has lasted the test of time. In fact I've used it on two projects this year already because it seemed the easiest and quickest solution to either exposing a .Net assembly to a native C++ app, and for providing a 64-bit app access to a 32-bit DLL that can't currently be
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I maintain a COM addin for Outlook 2003 written in C. It has a companion service program also written in C and calls only Win32 APIs. I really doubt that I am the only one. How is COM dead?
I'm risking a "whoosh" here... did you really just ask why your program written for an 8-year-old piece of software is considered... a bit dated?
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
The article says windows is getting a new API, WinRT, which is a modern version of Win32. .NET and C++ development will both be updated for WinRT and have the same capability as each other so you can work in the environment you choose. Silverlight is supported, updated and renamed (codenamed?) Jupiter. Some other new things were added. In summary, .NET developers, you're getting new functionality. C++ developers, you're getting new functionality. Plus it will be easier than ever to go back and forth between the two because, underlying it all, is a new unified API.
Another Summary (Score:2)
Early this month, Microsoft dropped something of a bombshell on Windows developers: the new Windows 8 touch-friendly immersive style would use a developer platform not based on .NET, which Microsoft has been championing for the past decade. Instead, it would use HTML5 and JavaScript.
But he doesn't believe the alarmist hype:
Windows developers want to be able to build immersive applications, and they don't want to have to use HTML5 and JavaScript to do it.
They won't have to. Want to write an immersive application in native C++? That's cool. Want to use C# and Silverlight? That's cool too. Both will be supported. Far from being left behind on the legacy desktop—which was the impression that many took from the presentation—native C++ and managed C# will both be first-class, supported ways of developing immersive, touch-first, tablet-friendly Windows 8-style applications.
(Feel free to write another, better summary. The one given is just completely inadequate for such a long article.)
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For that matter Peter Bright is wrong, whether he believes the hype or not, because there was no bombshell to begin with. At no point it was said that "the new Windows 8 touch-friendly immersive style would use a developer platform not based on .NET". The only thing that was said is that you will be able to develop for Windows 8 using HTML5 & JS. A few people took the latter to imply the former, and published stories where said implication was treated as plain fact - like the one mentioned in TFA - and
Microsoft fanfiction. (Score:3, Funny)
The article is something that I have never seen before -- Microsoft fanfiction.
What creates an interesting problem -- since Microsoft fanfiction exists, according to the rule 34 there must be Microsoft slash fanfiction. But since there is only one instance of Microsoft fanfiction and it is not slash, someone on the Internet must write Microsoft slash fanfiction.
Go, Internet, go!
Re:Microsoft fanfiction. (Score:4, Informative)
There are official MS OS Anime personifications, and there have been for quite some time.
I see that although you are not new to the net, you are new to this topic, so I'll link you to one list of the OS-tans. [ostan-collections.net] I'm sure you'll have no problem finding the other less NSFW places yourself to see more and better quality pics/fics, if you are so inclined...
There is indeed slash fiction. I read one not too long ago about XP-tan [imageshack.us] having an affair with Windows7-tan [photobucket.com], Vista-tan [muryou-ani...lpaper.net] was quite upset (her abandonment issues surfacing yet again); The always compassionate Linux-tan [ostan-collections.net] tried to console her, but it made the needy OSX Leopard-tan [deviantart.net] very jealous (apparently consoling a rival is a grave transgression on her home planet).
There are OS-kuns (males) as well... My girlfriend told me of the new yaoi slash she was reading where OSX-Kun [ostan-collections.net] fell in love with the heroic and savage XP-kun [fotolog.com] who had rescued him from the lair of the evil scientist Dr. Mac-Defender. In the heat of their passion OSX-kun had unknowingly infected XP-kun with a virus; Thus, both OS-kuns were soon on their way to see the comically bungling Dr. Norton-kun [ostan-collections.net].
Fear not my friends, Rule 34 can not be denied.
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Wouldn't it have to be Microsoft backslash fanfiction?
Steve Ballmer \ Rick Belluzzo?
(can't unthink...)
There is a brilliance here... (Score:2)
Maybe the response from .net developers is more rooted in the fact that a JS/HTML5 based application development language brings a whole lot more developers to the party with less of a learning curve.
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Yeah right. (Score:2)
The last time they promised that, Vista.
Re:So then, (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So then, (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not dropping Silverlight or .NET. Try to pay attention. Nobody with any sense ever thought they were going to, but the usual suspects took every opportunity to make a "Durr hurr, Microsoft screwing over developers" thing out of it when there was no indication whatsoever this would happen.
Nobody sane wants to develop large applications in fucking native JS and HTML5, and Microsoft knows that.
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Re:So then, (Score:4, Funny)
You mean that rumor I heard about Steve Ballmer turning tricks in Bellingham are false?
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You mean that rumor I heard about Steve Ballmer turning tricks in Bellingham are false?
I wouldn't go that far ;)
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They're always looking for new ones who don't know how the last ones got screwed.
Re:So then, (Score:4, Funny)
what happened to "developers developers developers" ?
They moved into the "O-cloud-O cloud-O cloud" [readwriteweb.com]
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You missed out on hta applications then... Ok Microsoft absolutely has tried to get people to develop application in HTML/vbscript/javascipt in the past/
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I don't post anonymous coward. And it is not blackmail. It's a simple fact. If you don't think that human resources and other decision makers don't google your name before deciding to give you money for your work, you must have missed quite a few stories on the subject of this thing call "the internet" and the things like "social networks." And when you google yourself, you get a lot of things about APK and Alexander Peter Kowalski.
Slashdot and other forums are public and indexed extensively. With ever
Re:Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA.
Windows developers want to be able to build immersive applications, and they don't want to have to use HTML5 and JavaScript to do it. They won't have to. ... Far from being left behind on the legacy desktop - which was the impression that many took from the presentation - native C++ and managed C# will both be first-class, supported ways of developing immersive, touch-first, tablet-friendly Windows 8-style applications.
Re:Not quite... (Score:4, Informative)
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The whole idea is to confuse you, so that you won't jump ship, and the ______ that you use now will kinda sorta be ok, and hey, imagine stuff working from phones to tablets to notebooks to desktops, any of which could have a cool GPU to do stuff, and you can maybe sorta use your old code.
Got it? Great. Logon now. Please. Pretty Please. HTML5! Java! You're a FOSS guy, right? You like that Java stuff! We promise not to fork it! Not like that stuff that's in court facing a huge settlement with Oracle, right? C
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Yeah.
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The way I see it is that MS is trying to push toward an easy interface for creating apps, while still leaving "legacy" languages functioning. It's a good sign really, there's a lot on the wind about where iOS will be headed. While Apple may not be able to beat MS at raw market penetration, iOS has shown that you can decimate market leaders by simplifying application development, delivery and accessibility. Look at Nokia, at one stage they almost owned the mobile market, now they have lost almost all their m
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So they're switching to Qt or GTK? Probably Qt but it doesn't really matter because they'll also provide wx so you can use the language of your choice and the UI details will be transparent. So what that means is dumping a bunch of legacy code and providing wx.net. Sounds good to me, I won't have to change a thing to remain cross-platform.
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It solves the architecture-compatibility issue easily enough, but there are serious limits in what currently exists as "HTML5 and Javascript" (lack of threads, performance, etc) that make this a potentially very bad decision.
What decision? They aren't 'moving developers' to this platform, all i've seen is that they have a new development platform - clearly not as technically capable as their multiple existing development platforms - based on HTML5 and Javascript.
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HTML5 plus JS can be a nice option for small stuff - gadgets, simple apps, etc. Lack of threading isn't very important - you can use asynchronous tasks, Ã la Web Workers. Sure it's less powerful, but more than enough for many tasks (and probably preferable if you don't really need threads).
The main concern is Trident's performance compared to V8 or TraceMonkey.
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The difference is that Longhorn's projected API's were advanced API's built on existing languages, tools, and frameworks, whereas the JavaScript switch is an attempt to move developers to a totally different (and arguably inferior) system.
But this is not a radical switch to Javascript designed to eliminate all other development systems any more than when Microsoft used HTML and Javascript to implement the Windows Sidebar [microsoft.com], or when they used HTML and Javascript to implement HTML Applications (HTAs) [microsoft.com], or when they used HTML and Javascript to implement Active Desktop gadgets [microsoft.com].
This is just a continuation of their development strategy that dates back to 1997. The controversy surrounding the use of HTML5 for the interface is just stupid and unjustifi
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I have a little difficulty believing that Microsoft, a company that has - since the inception of Windows - sacrificed functionality, security and stability for the sake of backwards compatibility is now all of a sudden forcing developers to switch to an entirely new language and development model.
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No, because they looked at Windows 8. And because anybody who's not, literally, mentally defective knows Microsoft isn't going to abandon .NET. You have to be a little smarter (say, 105 IQ) to know they're not going to abandon Silverlight, so I'll cut you a little slack there.
The idea is ridiculous. You seriously think people are going to write complex end user and enterprise apps in JS/HTML5? Seriously?
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Enterprise, yes. Personal, maybe/probably not. Lemme answer for him since I work on "enterprise" applications.
In the enterprise, you have two options for deploying to hundreds of users: installing local apps on every workstation, or using Citrix (which is nice, but pretty flakey sometimes). Citrix is basically Windows Remote Desktop, but more tuned to the task. In fact, MS licensed the technology from them.
Anyhow, when you need to perform maintenance or upgrades, you have to touch hundreds of workstatio
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Anyhow, when you need to perform maintenance or upgrades, you have to touch hundreds of workstations. Yes, there are ways to do this more easily, but it's easier with Citrix. And it's most easy if you just have web server software to upgrade.
You can have both of the world with REST (no session logic on the server) and a framework that accepts plugin-updates (e.g. Eclipse framework).
I heard cases in which stock trading apps were crafted this way - can't respond fast enough in a simple page in browser (mainly because of the server overload), can't afford not to update them, can't imagine a way in which the deployment a new version can be achieved by "download the installer and run it" means.
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This is basically the problem the One-Click is designed to solve. It deploys apps by web and is very easy to use.
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OP made it sound like you doubt the transition to web apps. Apparently I'm arguing for nothing. Good night!
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> No, because they looked at Windows 8.
Except that they didn't. They looked at a random build. Remember that Sagans of KLoCs were written for Longhorn and then abandoned. That wasn't the first time and it won't be the last. People wrote articles based on those leaked copies too, because they were intentionally leaked for just that purpose. It has always been thus, everyone else's shipping products are compared to what Microsoft says it will ship 'RSN.' Then it eventually ships and isn't anything lik
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It's harder to obsolete a library when people can just fork it and keep on as they always were. Unfortunately, they're free to do so whether or not the new option is worse than the older one.
PulseAudio - indeed (Score:4, Interesting)
i was dumbstruck with the audio quality pulseaudio + x-fi x-treme music + audacious media player with crystallizer plugin gave, when i switched to linux.
now im switching to linux every time i want to listen to music in high quality.
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If only there were similarly good tools for professional music production in Linux. It's getting there, but not yet.
Though as I've written before, there's definitely a place for Linux in the studio. Especially with Cockos' Reamote.
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The terms "audiophile" and "cryztalize" don't go together. Not even if you spell crystallize (or crystallise for the silly country) correctly.
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yeaaa (Score:2)
there is no crystalizer support for x fi under linux, but audacious media player does that perfectly well (even better) with its crystalizer plugin.
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Not necessarily a good thing.. (Score:3)
The thing about talking about something so significant in highly abstract terms is you'll tend to imagine it doing precisely what *you* think the words mean and how you think a vision could be realized.
Then, when you actually get to touch it, you realize their vision either isn't the same as yours, or even if it matches what you had in your head, in practice it won't work out so well.
The ultimate end-user filesystem experience hasn't changed in years for good reason. Any generic approach is going to be fra
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If your just talking about file meta data. NTFS as had extensible attribute (basically meta data) on files since at least NT 3.51 (maybe earlier). Plus the alternate file stream system would basically allow any application (aka backup applications, media applications, shell replacements whatever) to extend the concept in any way they wanted.
None of this is new, when I heard about the database filesystem back in 2002/2003 I though WFT, someone at M$ doesn't even know what their current filesystem is capable
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All Anonymous Coward posts default to 0.
Cocoa's evolution goes way back to the early 80s, so it does have some cruft. However, Objective-C on the Mac has included garbage collection for quite a long time. Managing resources is really a non-issue in the parent's case.
What I find most interesting about Cocoa is how many recent projects have been inspired by the API.
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Very true, but the original parent was talking about Mac development. Also, iOS has ARC now, which is not a whole lot different than GC from the developer's perspective.
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So if they knew they wanted a cross-platform product, why didn't your company select tools that work on all three platforms?
Who says they knew they wanted a cross-platform product? Maybe the program started as Windows-only. It's unclear what decisions went into their current split development and whether or not they were poor ones.
Don't think your .net is better than what your MAC coworkers are doing
You didn't support this statement (which I'm actually interested in, as I've never developed for a Mac)... you just said that .net isn't cross-platform so is worse than the cross-platform GUIs you mentioned.
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I wonder what kind of idiotic apps manager would say - Hmmm we need an application that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. What tools should we use? - I know - three development teams developing completely separate apps using completely separate languages and tool chains!!! Brilliant!
I guess someone failed to tell him there are cross platform tools that would allow the app to be developed once and deployed to all platforms.
but you don't know sh*t about f*ck when it comes to software development if you are bitching about how bad C# or .Net or WPF is for developing applications.
You post would suggest that m
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Does the Mac version have a different design spec, or is it about trying to offer as similar experience as possible on both platforms?
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I'm not sure why this is but frankly I find IB to be the best UI development tool I have ever used (including VS), I'm not sure what problems your developers are running into with it.
C# and WPF are nice, but you are off base with thinking Mac development is so hard or even much behind VS...