
Developers say Microsoft has "betrayed" them by changing Silverlight strategy - auxbuss
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11673384
======
city41
I've been working on a Silverlight app full time for the past 8 months. I was
relieved when Microsoft made this announcement (even if they are now trying to
back track on it a bit).

Silverlight isn't bad at all, really. In some ways it's just fantastic. And
given another 3 or 4 years or so, it will mature to the point of being a great
framework. It's a truly awesome framework for WP7 and if MS can gain some
traction behind WP7, having Silverlight in their corner is going to be a boon
for them.

But right now Silverlight is both mighty raw and almost pointless for webapps.
There are so many bugs in Silverlight itself and its related tools that it can
make working in Silverlight quite frustrating. When all this time I watch
HTML5 blossom and take off and pretty much gain feature parity (and beyond) to
Silverlight, I can't help but think to myself as I look at my app, "What's the
point?"

Nothing is perfect, and of course HTML5 is going to have its warts, especially
when dealing with every vendor's own implementation of JS and the new HTML5
components. But at least with this route you're swimming with the current and
not against it. There's a lot to be said for that.

~~~
Encosia
> But at least with this route you're swimming with the current and not
> against it. There's a lot to be said for that.

Exactly. It's disappointing how much time and effort has been squandered on
various abstractions primarily popularized because they gave developers
excuses to avoid learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

When it comes to Silverlight, it's easy to see how so many devs were tempted
to unnecessarily overuse it. Microsoft's PR efforts are often panned, but the
Silverlight hype machine was incredibly persuasive. I even questioned my own
focus on standards-based development[1] for a few brief moments during
conferences like MIX.

[1] [http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new-
webform...](http://encosia.com/2009/09/14/is-silverlight-the-new-webforms/)

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jeroen
I thought this was a refreshing move. They've accepted the situation and
adjusted their strategy accordingly. The only other option seems to be
ignoring reality and continuing on their old course, which won't do anything
to improve the success of Silverlight.

Even Adobe seems to have given up the fight and accepted html5 as the winner
(given their demo's of html5 authoring tools recently).

~~~
steverb
I do wish MS would release a SL to HTML5 compiler though. That would mitigate
a lot of the rancor.

~~~
DrJokepu
That would be a hard cookie. In many ways, Silverlight has a lot more features
than HTML5 and it is also compiled to binary. I guess it would be possible to
compile the binary to some sort of JavaScript and emulate some of the
Silverlight API, but I seriously doubt that it would yield very convincing
results.

~~~
steverb
I agree, but in my mind it doesn't need to be perfect. Just good enough to get
the bones to dance a little, and frankly, there isn't a lot you can do in SL
that you can't do in javascript / HTML.

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mikewoodhouse
Not exactly the pinnacle of BBC reporting there. No attribution, link or
otherwise for the assertion that "Developers" say they've been "betrayed". Who
are they, how many of them are there, how much actual investment have they
made and how do they expect to lose out? Not saying the story's necessarily
wrong or untruthful, just that as presented so far it can't be considered
anything more than gossip.

~~~
jeroen
The article talks about "many of the comments on Mr Muglia's blogpost", and
links to that blog post a bit further up:
[http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-
silverlight...](http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/)

------
contextfree
The gradual shift in strategy has actually been evident for a while. With
Silverlight 3, they introduced the ability to run outside the browser as a
desktop app, and with Silverlight 4, they placed a lot more emphasis on this
scenario and less on in-browser scenarios.

The point of writing a Windows desktop app in Silverlight is that not only is
your code more portable (relative to a native Win32 or full .NET/WPF app), but
SL apps are like iOS apps in that they are isolated from each other, easy to
update/service, etc. If Microsoft introduces a Windows app store soon as is
strongly rumored, it will probably feature prominently.

I think what has most developers upset is not so much the substance of the
message, which most of them already knew, but how it's being picked up in the
media (for which Microsoft's delivery of the message is to blame). The media
don't really care about development frameworks, so to them Silverlight-the-
browser-plugin (the part they see) = Silverlight. Therefore if Silverlight is
being de-emphasized as a browser plugin, it means Silverlight is dead, so
that's going to be the headline, and CIOs etc. who only read headlines are
going to see that and decide not to allow Silverlight development, even out-
of-browser.

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jared314
As a developer in the Microsoft stack, this is par for the course. Choose your
tech wisely.

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bradfordw
Sorry, I'm going to play the "greater good" card here. Yes, it's a shame
if/when your project gets canned. The important thing here is that the masses
will not be stuck with proprietary crap.

~~~
mattmanser
I'm going to play the progress card here.

The web just jumped back a decade to crappy old html. XAML is infinitely
superior. You can't even extend HTML server-side without writing code :( It's
got loads of odd rules. It still thinks everything is an overflowable document
when I want to write an application.

The web just jumped back to a kooky little language that's not grown for
decades. Javashit.

Silverlight had support for static, dynamic and even functional languages! C#,
VB.Net, IronPython, F#. And it's actually fast and compilable unlike javaslow.

(p.s. I don't actually mind javascript that much, but I do think it's pretty
poor compared to C#, Python, Ruby, etc. I do actually detest html though.)

A lot of us don't need cross device compatibility. In fact cross device
compatibility is pure laziness in many instances as a iPhone optimized web app
_should_ look very different to a laptop/desktop browser optimized app.

I'm not really sure where I stand in all this, but I'm not dancing around with
joy about HTML5, which I think is pretty basic and ridiculously behind the
times. These are features they should have introduced a decade ago.

I also really wish they'd make some way I could use other programming
languages in the browsers.

~~~
steverb
I'm not sure what you're complaining about. You can still use SL, it's not
going away, and it will continue to get new releases. If it meets your need, I
don't see any reason why you wouldn't continue to use it. It won't work on
every platform, but you say that's not a problem for you either. Go write some
XAML. Personally, I find that it really is awesome for Windows Phone
development.

As far as HTML / javascript goes, I'm beginning to get the impression that you
don't like it. I understand, I actually hated touching javascript until I fell
into JQuery. Even with it, I think developing javascript feels half-assed. But
that's what the platform uses and modern browsers are generally fast enough. I
tend to think of HTML as basically a display protocol though. It's ugly, but
it works.

Take heart though, you can write the server side in whatever language you
want, and your server-side can write your javascript for you.

~~~
mattmanser
I'm tired of the 'woo html5' and 'hate flash/silverlight' camps.

It feels as if the same people who talk about beating 'proprietary' with an
open web, open standards and open source code seem to miss we have _no_ choice
when it comes to web programming, it's html/javascript or bust.

And javascript is not fast enough. Not even vaguely close to being fast
enough. You must have seen the semi-regular 'look what I did with HTML5'
demos, yeah great, until you put them next to a flash or silverlight demo.
Then suddenly it looks pathetic. It's not up to the job.

This is a step back, not a step forward. It's not for the 'greater good', html
needs decent competition to keep it modern. Competition is healthy!

While it would never happen and will never happen, Microsoft releasing
Silverlight as an update to Windows could have given the HTML standards the
kick up the ass they need to start taking application development seriously.

For most of us the browser is the new defacto OS.

We're a community of entrepreneurs and developers for pete's sake. And yet
we're cheering on a virtual quango creating HTML5.

Relying on committees to drive forward the web is absurd. When did meetings
and committees ever actually solve a problem or produce amazing innovation?

------
matthewgifford
Developers complaining that a company with a history of treating people poorly
betrays them? Cry me a river.

~~~
steverb
I see where you're coming from, but in regards to MS and developers I really
can't disagree with you more. MS, more than most, bends over backwards to
reach out to developers. You can still target COM and OLE, you can still write
VB4. I have applications written for DOS and Windows 3.1 that still work on
Windows 7.

In this case, I think it is more a failure in PR than anything else.
Silverlight will continue to work on Windows and Mac, and it will be the
primary way of writing apps for the Windows phone. MS has just publicly
acknowledged that it's stupid to try to get the Silverlight VM to work on
every stack of hardware / OS. They just did it in a very ham-fisted fashion.

That wasn't really news to anyone that's been paying attention anyway. We've
been warning our developers away from writing any web apps with Flash or SL
(except for video playback) for over a year now. You can write very capable,
very pretty web apps using just javascript, CSS and HTML4. HTML5 just makes it
that much easier.

~~~
jasonlotito
> it will be the primary way of writing apps for the Windows phone.

This, right there. Silverlight isn't going away. It's still useful. They just
aren't trying to compete in an area where it won't be as useful. However,
Silverlight developers suddenly have this transferable skill that Flash
developers don't have on the mobile side.

~~~
peteypao
Yes, Silverlight will be used for WP7. But I doubt MS has any commitment to
keep it for future releases of WP7.

~~~
jasonlotito
Considering Silverlight and WPF also go together, I don't see Silverlight
going away anytime soon. I see it changing direction, or at least, not being
limited to just the web.

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RyanMcGreal
It seems like just yesterday that developers were saying Microsoft betrayed
them by breaking compatibility between VB6 and VB.Net.

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S_A_P
I think Silverlight as a WP7 app framework was the right thing to do. The
"R&D" team at my company has done alot of silverlight web apps, and most of
them have resulting in very pretty but completely unintuitive messes.

