
 Microsoft’s Silence is Infuriating .NET Developers - DanielRibeiro
http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/06/Win8-Doubt
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jasonkester
Has anybody actually met one of these Infuriated .NET developers?

I use the .NET stack for pretty much everything I do, and I'm not even
slightly worried that the next version of Windows will make my life worse. I
can't even come up with a way in which they could do so.

I get the feeling that there is some PR agency somewhere inventing these
stories for some motive of their own.

~~~
m0nastic
I don't know about "met", but for the past week or so, I've seen lots of "the
sky is falling" on Twitter from pissed off .NET developers.

I think much of it is an overreaction, but Microsoft's native development
story the past few years has given them room for concern. You're correct
though, that the idea that there won't be .NET applications being developed
and deployed over the next decade is pretty ridiculous.

I definitely think this is a PR disaster for Microsoft. Whether warranted or
not, if Windows developers feel like they're investing in deprecated
technology, there's a chance that what they jump to won't be controlled by
Microsoft.

~~~
teyc
_there's a chance that what they jump to won't be controlled by Microsoft._

... like HTML and jQuery ?

~~~
ianl
People are naturally resistent to change

~~~
teyc
No, I suspect it is a deeper fear. C# and Java devs have always commanded
higher rates despite the HTML devs producing better looking apps and cheaper
rates. With HTML being a first class citizen, I'm afraid this heralds the end
of the .NET gravy train.

~~~
heimidal
I have quite a few friends doing .NET for a living, and I can safely say that
I make more than them using Ruby at work (at an ad agency, no less). They
would definitely not call their jobs a "gravy train."

~~~
hello_moto
One word: outliers.

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sandycheeks
From what I've read, it looks like the people most concerned are the ones who
have become accustomed to the 'visual' programming interface. I left corporate
IT over 8 years ago for my own biz (after over ten years of doing it nights
and weekends) but I was an administrator and an MCSD/MCDBA who made unix and
windows play nice together so I often was approached with broken enterprise
apps that almost always turned out to be Access .mdbs or VB programs that were
being used by hundreds of people across large networks for critical (often
financial) tasks. Fixing them taught me a lot about the capabilities of the
authors (hard working good people) who were allowed to appear as much better
software developers than they actually were.

Going through 'wizards' and setting properties in a drag and drop visual
environment are great for prototyping but these developers were often
pressured by their managers to make these prototypes live immediately.
Problems were fixed with 'work arounds' and users complained constantly.
Often, all I had time to do was clean it up, trim it down and move it to a SQL
Server. A temporary fix at best.

I can only imagine that the fear of losing support for these tools is driving
a lot of the forum posts that I have seen.

I for one am extremely curious to see what microsoft considers to be HTML5.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
_From what I've read, it looks like the people most concerned are the ones who
have become accustomed to the 'visual' programming interface. ... Going
through 'wizards'_

You read wrong. Expression blend is not a wizard. It's more like Photoshop.

------
larsberg
Rumor has it, leaking info coming at BUILD is insta-termination. And while
that's old hat for Apple employees, devs targeting the Microsoft platform
aren't used to surprises or secrets.

Of course, who else is expecting to just hear that Silverlight _is_ HTML5?
Code targeting it and any HTML5 browser will be able to run the apps, with a
better ("native") experience on Windows, but supported on those other
platforms... :-)

~~~
contextfree
The funny thing is that alpha builds of Win8 itself have already been leaked,
and people have been deciphering the various new DLLs. There's apparently a
new native UI framework that's based on, but not the same as, Silverlight
(similar to how Silverlight is based on WPF)

~~~
ghurlman
The thing you want to plug into Google here is "Jupiter", or "Jupiter UI"

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darrenkopp
I'm sorry, but Silverlight developers can wait 2 months to hear info about an
operating system that's more than 12 months from release.

~~~
wvenable
The only logical stance is that they're going to kill Silverlight and don't
want to say anything until they have all their ducks in a row.

However, Microsoft isn't necessarily logical. They may simply have not
expected people would read this from their Win8 demo and nobody in the company
is willing to speak up about Silverlight's roll in Win8.

Either way, this is bad PR for Microsoft.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
_However, Microsoft isn't necessarily logical_

It's not useful to think of it in terms of what "Microsoft is" or "Microsoft
isn't". Microsoft is a very big place, and the internal power struggles are
what shape it. In this case, it's Windows division under Steven Sinofsky
versus Developer Tools division. DevDiv owns .Net, WinDiv is less keen on it,
and they have IE9 now.

Sinofsky is the one who came up with the "native html" non-sequitur at the
mix11 conference. How do you start to try to get platform-specific coders to
adopt a cross-platform lowest-common-denominator technology? Call it "native".

If this is Kremlinology then so be it. it's the only way to make sense of MS.
It's sad that their best technologies are used as ammo in internal battles.

~~~
teyc
Don't forget, WPF held up LongHorn and they had to reboot their development.
By taking care of the windowing framework deep within Windows (presumably the
underlying code is unmanaged) and removing the dependency on .NET, Windows
division is ensuring that they will never suffer the humiliation of delays
because of DevDiv.

------
Meai
There is nothing Microsoft could say to appease .NET developers. Obviously
.NET and Silverlight aren't going away, everybody must know that. The only
reason people are so mad, is because now they are not the only courted
workforce anymore.

~~~
teyc
There is probably another reason here. WPF and Silverlight were meant to bring
rich beautiful interfaces to Windows. But they did not succeed not because of
the technology. The reason is precisely because a majority of the people who
are prepared to learn .NET is the old breed of developers who still think in
terms of WIMP interfaces. So years after WPF, there are few good looking apps
in the wild.

In contrast, the devsigner community in HTML is vibrant and competitive. Just
look at how many beautiful SaaS apps there are.

MS needs these people working on their stack and they realize Silverlight and
WPF is a hard sell for these people who already have HTML chops. If they could
get these devsigners working on Windows, it will present a shot in the arm for
better looking UI on Windows again.

~~~
jinushaun
No, as a WPF/Silverlight developer, I think those technologies failed to take
off because the development workflow of WPF/Silverlight simply sucks ass.
Expression Blend is awful and is incompatible enough with VS that it becomes a
nuisance to use.

XAML, WPF and Silverlight were designed by .NET developers for .NET
developers, but marketed towards designers. You cannot develop/design in that
ecosystem without already knowing C#, VS project and solution files. The
workflow was very dev-centric, and that's why I think it failed to take off as
MS would like.

~~~
teyc
Well, the tools may be awful, but designers are not easily persuaded to change
their tools. Even today, Photoshop trumps Illustrator in popularity. There is
_no_ workflow from PSD to HTML other than a secondary market of slicers. If MS
wished to succeed, it had to bring the same familiar workflow into the
process.

 _The workflow was very dev-centric, and that's why I think it failed to take
off as MS would like._

+1

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powertower
As a .NET developer myself I will be glad to share with all of you that the
only people who are infuriated by any of this are morons who think html/js
widgets are replacing the .NET CLR + Framework/Library + C#. I won't argue
with morons and neither should you.

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aufreak3
I'm a newbie to JavaScript, who got in primarily for the upcoming "web audio
API" in webkit. As I code, I realize how capable the JS engines have become
over time - enough to do some "serious" math for audio. Also seeing WebGL
taking hold, I must say that I'd certainly consider JS as a serious contender
for the likes of .Net etc and am glad to see MS and HP also think along those
lines. Add in the fact that you can use it on the server side as well, and the
argument for it is even more compelling.

I don't have any qualms saying that those who choose to stay out are depriving
themselves of what starting to be a productive app dev platform across the
board, with C++ serving as the "dive in for performance" level.

~~~
nxn
"Also seeing WebGL taking hold, I must say that I'd certainly consider JS as a
serious contender for the likes of .Net etc"

At most I would say JavaScript can be a "serious contender" to a very small
subset of .NET. There is no way you can just substitute everything .NET offers
with a mix of html5 and JavaScript. That's why I don't think anyone doing .NET
development should be in the least bit concerned. That is unless they have
some irrational phobia of having to learn something new for their presentation
layer.

~~~
aufreak3
Any examples? HTML5+JS does look quite rich as a presentation layer. Well,
rich enough for Apple to build iAds on it, WebOS to build its UI layer on it
.. and, on the topic, even MS is basing the Win8 presentation layer on it.

Is your point only about the presentation layer or about other parts of .Net?

~~~
nxn
To clarify:

HTML5+JS is only suitable as a replacement to the presentation portions of
.NET (so WPF or WinForms), which are just a small portion of everything that
.NET is. Think of .NET as being a Humvee and HTML5 and JS as a motorcycle, and
developing your application as going to some remote location in Alaska --
while the motorcycle will look great, it will only get you so far, and you
need something more for the rest of the road that can also carry a motorcycle
if need be.

JS is a language that primarily lives in the browser and doesn't come with
anything that would allow you to access much of the computer it is running on.
We're talking about applications that will be executing natively here, so
things like access to the file system are a must. You can of course try to use
something that implements the CommonJS spec, like NodeJS, but are you honestly
going to throw out the massive amount of libraries Microsoft created for doing
IO, database connectivity, concurrency, networking, and a whole lot more, for
something as minimalistic as an implementation of the CommonJS spec?

There are other problems on top of this. People say JavaScript is "fast", and
it's true when compared to JavaScript a few years ago, but it is not true when
compared to most .NET languages. Objects essentially being associative arrays
in JavaScript means accessing a value that is deeply nested in a hierarchy of
objects is slow. While even a problem now, it would get much much worse if you
were to throw in the large number of libraries needed to make HTML5 and JS
into a general application development framework. Stuff like:
Com.Company.Project.Class.Member.Member.Method(); simply takes too much time
in JavaScript. Same story for deep inheritance chains you often see in desktop
apps.

Another problem: If your whole application is going to be in HTML5+JS, your
whole application's source code is going to be public. You can try
obfuscation, but I personally wouldn't put much faith into that approach.

.NET was built from the ground up as a whole application development framework
-- it does this well. While HTML5+JS overlap with .NET in some areas, their
scopes are still much smaller in comparison, and are therefore not suitable as
complete replacements to .NET.

------
pistacchio
i don't think silverlight is going away in the nearest future, but if you're
really "infuriating", the only reason i can assume is that you based your
whole business in a proprietary technology owen by a company known for
promoting something new, and making it obsolete after two years. you jumped
with both feet in a technology that won't be an official standard and
multiplatform like one of the competitors (html5 + js) nor as widespread like
the other most direct competitor (flash).

that would be _your_ fault, not microsoft's.

