
Microsoft refuses to comment as .NET developers fret about Windows 8 - bensummers
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/4443-microsoft-refuses-to-comment-as-net-developers-fret-about-windows-8.html
======
pilif
I don't know. From that demo, I really doubt that the tiled interface will
ever provide enough functionality for these apps to be really useful or as
full-featured as their real desktop counterparts.

I see this tile-thingy more as an additional overview-shell, but the real work
will remain to be done in the classic apps. This is more comparable to the Mac
Dashboard widgets than to a complete UI redesign.

As such, I see no problem in doing these widgets in HTML/JS which is what we
have used ever since. The "real" applications will still be done in whatever
technology is available under windows.

Of course, everything is just speculation. I just know that I'm sure as hell
never going to use a touch interface on my desktop PC nor drag around tiles
with the mouse trying to fake enough inertia to get the scrolling to go.

~~~
illumin8
I think you are onto something here. I think the tiled interface will be very
similar to the Windows Media Center shell. It's a specialized interface for
touch, just like WMC is a specialized interface for couch surfing.

In the end it's not going to be very useful for end users unless Microsoft
really bites the bullet and forces developers to migrate to the tiled
interface, en mass. Apple did that with iOS, basically forcing developers to
create entirely new apps, because the input method of touch was so drastically
different that apps requiring mouse-level precision would never work.
Microsoft will never do that, so instead they need to fragment their OS into
two interfaces, touch and classic.

I fear a Windows 8 tablet will be the worst of both worlds. It will need
enough horsepower to run "classic mode" with all of the baggage that brings,
yet most tablet users are just doing simple media consumption so they can stay
in tiled mode most of the time. In the end you bring a product to market that
costs $1500, has a quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM, and gets 4 hours of battery
life - not to mention it weighs 3 pounds. Basically you end up with the
current crop of Windows tablets. A stylus will probably be included just to
make classic mode usable.

I'm not saying there isn't a market for a powerful tablet that can run Windows
8 in classic mode, but those tablets have been around for years and they
haven't gotten mass market traction for a reason.

~~~
kenjackson
Actually MS directly addressed the horsepower aspect. Remember they're going
to have this running on ARM. I've used Win7 for consumption scenarios on a
$250 netbook - worked like a champ.

------
Animus7
Microsoft's biggest problem is how fractured this new consumer-centric
approach is inevitably going to feel for everyone, though devs are probably
going to be hit the most, and that spells trouble.

The problem is that Windows has a slew of legacy API's, languages, and
frameworks that you can't get rid of without undermining the existing
application ecosystem that made it popular. And it seems like they're not
willing to get rid of any of that for the new world of web/mobile apps, like
Apple did with flying colors. Instead they're shoehorning yet another
framework onto an already bloated platform.

So in the end they're trying to apply a lesson from Apple (touch,
interactivity) with total disregard for why it worked (simplicity,
seamlessness, usability). A recipe for failure if I ever saw one. Ballmer
still doesn't get why iPhone won the mobile wars.

~~~
tomjen3
The iPhone hardly won the mobile wars with Android gaining that much market
share (and even in some measurements, exceeding it) - it is a little like
saying that the British have won the war of independence because they have the
rebels holed up in a fort.

~~~
Animus7
By iPhone, I mean the concept, not the brand. And iPhone clearly paved the way
for Android.

~~~
tomjen3
Okay, that I will buy.

------
bad_user

         *We put up with Windows so we can use C#, 
          F# and VS2010*
    

It's not like you won't be able to use .NET - they are just adding IE9 into
the equation, so I don't understand what this "fret" is about.

This is what happens when developers believe blindly in promises, instead of
focusing on getting the job done with minimal friction.

Of course Microsoft was going to let go of the .NET "vision" at some point, as
.NET is not applicable to everything. If you believed that by learning .NET
you are going to have a unified platform to be able to use it for everything,
that's your problem.

It's like believing .NET's CLR is a general-purpose VM. Well, it ain't. Yes it
provides some flexibility, but you'll never have Haskell on it. Or a
reasonable LUA implementation for that matter.

And in my view, basing this new UI on IE9 and Javascript/HTML is a move in the
right direction for Microsoft, one of the few I've seen in years - I mean, why
reinvent the wheel instead of leveraging the knowledge of lots of outside
developers? Last time I checked, even Adobe AIR had better penetration than
Silverlight (total, not counting the number of out-of-browser Silverlight apps
or people that use such apps).

~~~
dfj225
> I don't understand what this "fret" is about.

My perception is that they are worried that their existing knowledge (in .NET
or any other MS dev tech) will not allow them to create applications for this
new touch interface. Instead, they will be forced to use a new technology if
they want to create an app for the new Windows 8 interface.

~~~
rbanffy
I get the impression some developers really dislike learning new things.

~~~
kenjackson
I don't think it's learning new things per se. The main thing is they don't
like the technology stack and the dev tools.

~~~
rbanffy
Most of the time, the criticism comes before the first contact with the
technology being criticized. For instance, most of the people who criticize
Smalltalk's "alien" syntax never finished a single tutorial.

~~~
kenjackson
I think that does often happen the way you described, but not in this case.

First, to be a dev using the MSFT stack, as I'm sure you know, you learn a new
technology every week -- so they're not against learning new things :-)

But more importantly, most of them complaining have used HTML/JS, and many use
it regularly for the web side of the house. It's not an obscure language/Fx
that people haven't touched before. They maybe haven't written Angry Bird with
it (which BTW, their JS looks like it was machine generated -- anyone know how
it was done?), but most know the technology decent enough to comment about it.

~~~
rbanffy
> most of them complaining have used HTML/JS

Using HTML/JS in Internet Explorer is _very_ different from developing on a
platform where HTML/JS application development is fully supported. I have been
playing for some time with WebOS development and I am quite happy with it.

Anyway, I seriously doubt .NET will be deprecated anytime soon.

~~~
kenjackson
_Using HTML/JS in Internet Explorer is very different from developing on a
platform where HTML/JS application development is fully supported. I have been
playing for some time with WebOS development and I am quite happy with it._

This is probably true. But the tooling still leaves a bit to be desired.

I was really excited about WebOS when it first came out, but they just took
too long to get the SDK out. I eventually just moved on and haven't gone back.
Although I do think the new stuff they're doing looks quite nice.

~~~
rbanffy
Are you confusing an SDK with an IDE? IIRC, the Palm launched an SDK early on,
with a full device emulator. I don't see why an IDE is a basic requirement.
I've been on and off IDEs for the past 2000 and, quite frankly, I am perfectly
happy with Emacs.

~~~
kenjackson
No, I was given a Palm Pre (post-release), but didn't have access to the SDK.
Here's an article:

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134650/Palm_expects_...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9134650/Palm_expects_wide_availability_of_SDK_for_Pre_this_summer?source=rss_news)

If you were approved you got access, but most didn't. I think jwz ranted about
this too. There were all these devs who wanted to write for it, but weren't
given access. Eventually I gave the phone back.

General rule, your SDK needs to be done a month before product launch --
unless you're Apple.

~~~
rbanffy
Odd. I remember getting the SDK _very_ early. Maybe the fact I was a PalmOS
developer since ever did play in my favor.

------
robgough
As a .NET developer, I'm not in any way worried that they're going to replace
the .NET framework as their primary enterprise platform, with javascript.

For this tile UI, I'm a little surprised - if only because it's quite
different from how WinPhone7 works (isn't it?).

~~~
keyle
Let's face it. Thinking that WPF/C# can be replaced by HTML/JS is foolish at
best.

The html apps will be the widgetty type applications, while the real working
computing applications will be written in solid .NET.

My only concern is this integration of one into the other that they show. It
looks like slapping a pig on top of a cow and asking for babies.

~~~
robgough
I would have preferred if they had somehow integrated/replaced the system tray
functionality with that of the tiling interface... as my understanding the
tiles can mimic most of this functionality, if not do a little more.

I dare say most the concern I'm seeing about this so far is that they've
simply not gone far enough... Unless the tiling interface is the __primary
__mode of use, then most people simply won't use it and it'll be relegated to
the list of features the OS has, that simply no one uses. Think "Windows
SideShow".

Of course, this all depends on what MS are planning on doing - and I think
they've made yet another PR misstep (even if it's only to developers) in that
they've simply not released enough information. I can't decide if they're
teasing deliberately in an attempt to drum up interest (working, but I would
argue that it's more worry than interest to their target demographic) or
whether they actually don't have much more than this demo and that they don't
know what their long term plans are (even more worrying?)

~~~
kenjackson
_I dare say most the concern I'm seeing about this so far is that they've
simply not gone far enough... Unless the tiling interface is the primary mode
of use, then most people simply won't use it and it'll be relegated to the
list of features the OS has, that simply no one uses._

I think their intent is that this new UI is the Windows UI. I think they're
going to push devs to use this new UI for all apps unless they need to go to
the old UI. Recall that native apps will not be cross platform, so there's
motivation for devs to target this new UI to run on x86 and all the ARM
variants.

------
powertower
All this fear is coming from weak-knee programmers and people who love to bask
in FUD.

You don't build applications with logic and complicated function out of HTML
and JS. Not today, not tomorrow.

My (and your) 10k, 100k, 200k line C# applications are not writable in JS.

Sure, there is GMail and Node.JS as examples. But thats kind of a niche
compared to everything else.

HTML and JS are just going to be another way do to UI, and nothing else.
You'll still need to write the C# app and use .NET to do the backend.

HTML/JS will be another option right along with XAML/WPF and SilverLight.

~~~
nkassis
"My (and your) 10k, 100k, 200k line C# applications are not writable in JS."

I don't know that this will be true for very much longer, if it's not already
been disproven. Javascript isn't the greatest language out there but it's gain
functionality that is removing the limitations that uses to plague it compared
to other languages. Slow VM is not longer true, no multithreading is not
longer true. Webworkes are a little odd for sure, but they still make it
possible to build multithreaded applications. WebGL/Canvas allow for some very
advanced graphical applications. You can now access local storage, a database
(and in node, other databases), new ArrayBuffers and such. It's a different
environment now.

~~~
powertower
> I don't know that this will be true for very much longer, if it's not
> already been disproven.

Please show me examples of these 50k+ line JS applications that have no
backend, or run JS on the backend, that are not a mess.

...That you can develop, debug, and tie in with the rest of the system with
the same ease (or even 10% of ease) as you can with native .NET apps.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Why do you judge sophistication in code by number of lines?

~~~
WayneDB
I think he's talking about the maintainability of such an app in the hands of
your average joe programmer, not the sophistication of the language. Also,
static typing does have it's advantages, particularly in that it's easier to
write tools for developing and debugging those languages.

------
JonoW
As a .NET dev, I'm not worried, MS has invested really heavily into .NET, it's
everywhere in their eco-system now. Even if the preferred way to build _some_
desktop apps was HTML/JS, .NET is still going to be in use in many other
places.

Even if they did ditch .NET (which I don't think they will), it would take
years to do; plenty of time to move to something else ;)

~~~
rbanffy
Keep in mind those HTML/JS apps will probably have hooks into .NET libraries
installed on the system. And I bet that HTML will still be compatible with
ActiveX.

------
felixmar
The problem with WPF/Silverlight is that Microsoft never managed to make it
feel fast enough to compete with native code. The Windows Phone 7 UI is
praised because of its excellent performance. Now imagine that Microsoft would
have used WPF instead. Because of the Silverlight requirement it's impossible
for third party app developers to reach same level of performance as build-in
services.

I would like to see a new UI framework that everyone inside Microsoft feels is
good enough to use. And give third parties equal access.

~~~
chrisjsmith
Agreed. Visual Studio 2010 is testament to your comment.

~~~
keyle
I've got a i7 8gig of ram and SSD and VS2010 runs like a complete pig on a
year old project. It's unbelievably bad.

Each time I report problems, they close them saying 'cannot reproduce'. So if
that's the case, why do people upvote my issues?

~~~
arethuza
There is definitely something weird with the performance of VS 2010 - running
it side by side on two identical laptops on the same project one was unusable
and the other was perfectly OK.

~~~
chrisjsmith
That might be the graphics card. We purchased ATI FireGL cards to speed up VS
performance and it worked!

~~~
S_A_P
I will concur. Aside from a memory hog, VS2010 performance has been ok on my
dev box which has an NVidia Quadro card in it. However, there are still some
quirks in the environment that I attribute to WPF bugs. I have frequent redraw
issues even after applying SP1. I also noticed that my installation has a
whole lot of trouble with datasets and pulling up the designer file. TFS 2010
issues have been the most frustrating thus far though. They are better with
SP1, but still exist.

~~~
chrisjsmith
I have frequent redraw issues as well with Quadro cards. Particularly when
moving VS between screens (we have dual monitor setups). It sometimes whites
out portions of it. Occasionally as well it just goes batshit and goes white
and flickers as well. Oh and the performance sucks on low end Quadro cards. We
upped them to ATI FireGL and they seem ok now. Still not happy about the
situation.

~~~
taway990
Have you tried disabling the use of hardware acceleration? WPF seems to have
some issues with some graphics cards, or more accurately some graphics cards
have some buggy hardware acceleration. Another thing I have noticed is that
use over remote desktop and on VMs (specifically VMWare) can have quirks, then
again I thought I read somewhere that WPF has to use bitmap remoting instead
of primimtive remoting because Windows doesn't offer them any way to take
advantage of primitive remoting because they aren't Win32 based (except their
root visual which is an HWND, but everything else uses DirectX surfaces),
which is a great example of Microsoft teams having pissing contests that just
hurts users.

~~~
chrisjsmith
Yeah tried that. Didn't make much difference. I think the main issue with the
Quadro's was the poor quality of drivers more than anything else. Even the
WHQL ones are junk.

VMware - forget it - unusable. All our infrastructure is VMware based and we
have to do remote debugging on VM's via RDP. Yuck. I think when RDP is used it
falls back to a GDI+ backend as HW accelerated primitives cannot be thrown
down an RDP link and then uses tiles (as you state).

This is all down to the fact that RDP came before DWM. If it was the other way
around we'd be throwing surfaces down the wire which would be nice.

~~~
edandersen
>> This is all down to the fact that RDP came before DWM. If it was the other
way around we'd be throwing surfaces down the wire which would be nice.

The joke here is that on Vista to Vista RDP connections (.NET 3.0), WPF was
properly remoted over the wire and rendered on the client machine instead of
bitmaps being sent. This was removed in .NET 3.5.
(<http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=216>)

------
MatthewPhillips
Anyone who has worked enterprise in the eastern half of the U.S. knows better
than to be worried by this. There are so many mission-critical business
applications written in C#, and even VB.net, that the idea of .NET jobs going
away in the next 15 years, even if MS were to abandon the product today, is
nil.

Where I live I would guess that at least 90% of job postings for programmers
are .NET.

~~~
ern
How many of these mission critical business systems are written with WPF or
Silverlight for the native front-end? I don't know the numbers, but my guess
is that the bulk would still be Winforms.

I think a lot of people who develop desktop front ends for .NET (and want to
develop on new projects) would have put effort into learning Silverlight
and/or WPF and are afraid that the effort is going to be wasted, as they need
to learn another technology.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
What exactly does learning Silverlight entail that differs from learning any
other .NET environment? XAML is just an xml markup. I only used it on a WP7
app and it took me a couple of hours to get the gist of how it works.

~~~
luffy
Not much really, especially if you limit the XAML to basic layouts. If you do
everything in C#, it's not too much different from something like, say,
WinForms. Which is why people like it.

------
Andrex
Last time Silverlight was in the headlines it was because, surprise, MS was
pushing HTML5/JS over it. Same deal here, I can't say I'm too shocked this
time.

Although now their API situation is more of a mess, with normal native APIs
plus HTML5 for Windows now, then there's Silverlight for Windows Phone 7.
Makes you wonder if they didn't have any foresight about this decision when
choosing WP7's set of APIs.

------
brudgers
The idea that Microsoft is going to go the IOS route is so completely contrary
to the interests of their primary customer bases - business and enterprise -
that it is only the constant call of the techpress for Microsoft to be more
like Google or Apple which gives the idea credence.

Windows has had HTML and script based Apps in the form of HTA's for a long
time (i.e. IE5). So in many ways the buzz seems more of a marketing coup than
a revolutionary new approach (aimed at getting consumers to enable scripting
on desktop installations). I suspect Silverlight to be deprecated as a web
technology because it has many of the same issues as Flash (for which it was
always intended as an alternative/replacement), but .NET is here to stay. It
is .NET that facilitates the expanding ability of Windows to run on diverse
architectures - since Windows Vista the Windows OS is essentially .NET for
many purposes and Windows 8 and WP7 are extensions of that roadmap. A roadmap
which, again, is business focused and tailored to provide stability.

[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms536496%28v=vs.85%2...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ms536496%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application>

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/200874>

~~~
jimbobimbo
Windows had never made it into "essentially .NET". Longhorn was going to be
the first one, but it was scraped and Vista is essentially Win32/Win64 APIs
with pre-installed .NET framework. I doubt there's anything in Windows client
that is written in .NET - server is a different story though.

~~~
kenjackson
Windows Media Center is written in .NET.

~~~
jimbobimbo
Which, BTW, uses its own proprietary UI framework, not even XAML.

------
jwwest
Windows developers have a bad reputation for being fixated on one or two
programming languages and tools at the expense of learning other platforms.
Can't say I would feel sorry for them if any of this were to be true.

There's something to be said about breadth versus depth.

~~~
ern
_Windows developers have a bad reputation for being fixated on one or two
programming languages and tools at the expense of learning other platforms.
Can't say I would feel sorry for them if any of this were to be true._

This is an unfortunate, and valid criticism. I've worked with senior C# and VB
developers who hadn't encountered the concept of an (OO) interface, but they
got along just fine with their day-to-day jobs, copy-pasting. However, I do
feel sympathy for them - they were so insulated from the wider programming and
CS communities, that they didn't even realize there were other things
happening in the wider dev world. Their fault was one of ignorance, not
arrogance (and of believing everything Microsoft told them at the developer
events they attended).

------
evo_9
I think the bigger issue here is how Microsoft is handling the dissemination
of coming changes. Why on earth say nothing except 'please wait until
september'. Between now and September I could learn object-c and move to
another platform. Just a really unwise approach. At the minimum they should be
saying, '...your investment in the Microsoft stack will not be lost, C#, F#
and VisualStudio are important technologies that we are committed too...'.

So here we are left to speculate as to what happens next. I can't believe they
would simply toss all the technology out - what's the alternative for true
native apps, pure C++?

As far as the HTML5/Javascript thing goes - hell yeah, I switched to using
html(4/5)/javascript and css(2/3) for my front-end code over a year ago. I
think this is actually a pretty shrewd move and likely will be more a focus
for the tablet and phone developer side allowing easier porting across all the
emerging platforms. The fact that I may be able to use that same tech for
Windows desktop apps is nice bonus, but like we all saw on iOS - nothing beats
native for the best client experience, at least for now.

------
lini
What's to stop you from putting a Silverlight APP in the tiled interface?
Silverlight runs OK now in HTML pages so in theory it should work in the HTML
+ JS Win8 box as well :)

~~~
michael_dorfman
I think what is more troubling is that Microsoft has apparently signaled a
major shift in the preferred way to develop programs for the Windows platform
_and_ simultaneously refused to address the implications for developers,
asking them to wait for further announcements in September.

That's a recipe for fear, uncertainty and doubt within the tribe itself.

Put another way: it's hard to reconcile _"Developers! Developers! Developers!
Developers! Developers!"_ with _"We're changing things radically concerning
the way you develop, but we won't tell you how-- hold tight until September,
'mmm-kay?"_

EDIT: formatting

~~~
xradionut
There's a huge number of business developers this won't affect. .NET and
"normal" desktop, web and server apps are still the bread and butter for these
folks. Not everyone is on the bleeding edge.

~~~
teyc
There is a turf war at the moment between MS, Apple and Goog. Developers take
time to tool up and skill up, and amidst all the gunsmoke and fog of war, we
all have to decide who to pledge our allegiance to. By not mentioning
Silverlight or WPF, MS is effectively switching sides from developers who have
invested in exclusively MS tech to those who are far less partisan, and it
hurts.

~~~
ern
_MS is effectively switching sides from developers who have invested in
exclusively MS tech to those who are far less partisan, and it hurts._

Microsoft does seem to be inching away from its traditional developer base to
broaden its appeal.

Lightswitch seems to be another example. I doubt that it will be as empowering
for non-developers as the marketing suggests, but it should reduce the
effort/expertise required in creating well-architected CRUD apps, making in-
house development easier and exerting downward pressure on project costs. This
will hurt some consulting shops.

But Microsoft's duty isn't to look after its loyal developers, it is to
maximize shareholder value.

~~~
teyc
Lightswitch is Silverlight wrapped in a good practice framework, just like
Wavemaker generates code on Spring.

I had a play with Lightswitch and I liked it. It is like MS Access. I'm
surprised they positioned this at the developers rather than power users
though. Perhaps there is a wall between the tools division and the Office
division.

On the topic of loyalty, platform companies are like the Mafioso. Loyalty or
the lack of it cuts both ways. MS tech is not the easiest to learn. The reason
MS got away with it for years is because Sun was even worse.

~~~
ern
_I had a play with Lightswitch and I liked it. It is like MS Access. I'm
surprised they positioned this at the developers rather than power users
though._

They _are_ positioning at power users, but it does seem like more of a
developer tool. I think it will appeal to less-skilled or time constrained
developers more than to power users. I've turned down side projects, where
Lightswitch would have been extremely helpful because of time constraints.

I have worked in consulting places where income is generated, especially
during lulls, with the sort of apps that Lightswitch is supposed to generate.
I expect, if Lightswitch works as advertised, to see less of those projects.

 _MS tech is not the easiest to learn. The reason MS got away with it for
years is because Sun was even worse._

My personal hope is that Microsoft feels threatened enough to produce some
silver bullets for business application development, or at least to try.

~~~
eropple
I dunno - .NET has long felt like that silver bullet to me. It's rare for me
to enthuse over a programming language, but C# is fantastic and F# great in
its own niche, and .NET tends to have all the bells, whistles, and gongs that
I feel benefit me as a developer.

~~~
jules
That _is_ the problem. The system is very complicated and verbose to use.

Lets say you want to write a program that extracts all links from a web page.
How would you go about this? First, you look up in the documentation how to
load a web page over http. This requires several lines of code, and it's
complicated enough that you don't know it by heart after the first time you've
done it. From there on it gets easier: you get a library and read the
documentation to parse HTML and use an xpath or css selector to load all the
links and then read of the href attribute. All of this probably requires
around 15 lines of code, with various method calls that you have to look up.

In Ruby, I do this:

    
    
        doc = Nokogiri::HTML(open('http://google.com'))
        urls = doc.css('a').map{|link| link[:href]}
    

I know how to do this by heart because there are just a couple of things to
remember. Not having to look at any documentation to do simple stuff like this
saves a lot of time.

------
sradnidge
I love the first comment in the original thread, specifically:

>“Microsoft has first class cross-platform application framework called
Silverlight and they want us to right freaking javascript.”

Yeh, because js isn't a first class, cross platform language...

~~~
thomasz
To be fair, it should be _a lot_ less expansive to get a complex UI running
for 90% of a typical user base with silverlight, provided that your business
model allows you to ignore the fsf crowd. In the context of those touchy-feely
applications for windows 8, it is a hysterically stupid move to force
developers into the web stack, and then tell them to go fuck themselves and
port the whole shit to Silverlight for WP7 devices. It is really less "cross
platform", considered what platforms those devs care about.

I can think of very few reasons for this idiocy besides relations between OS
and devtools devision having quietly deteriorated from post WWII style peace
to nuclear war.

------
thepumpkin1979
This is a market strategy. Microsoft knows desktop apps, WPF, Silverlight are
losing the battle against HTML5/CSS/JS based apps, the most obvious movement
Microsoft could have done is create a 2 minute video of their next OS and say
"hey Web Developers, you can use your web skills here too".

Also, this video says nothing about the architecture behind this
"Launcher"(because that what it looks like), there are a lot of possibilities.
May be IE10 has some kind of <protected-frame> element so you can specify
certain permissions like network access, file system access and stuff, maybe
it requires a manifest in which you can specify what "DOM manipulation
technology" do you want to use, the most obvious options are:

\- A Javascript (IE9 code-name "Chakra" engine) based file. \- A JScript.NET
file. \- Any DLR based language file. \- Any .NET assembly decorated with some
fashion attributes like
<Windows8Launcher.TileDomBehindAttribute(typeof(MyTileHandler))> or something
which you can easily compile with any .NET compiler like C#, VB.NET, C++ CLI,
etc.

May be developing in HTML is completely optional and each Tile can be
developed using Silverlight or Windows Presentation Foundation technologies...
we don't know.

We know that Microsoft is a legacy company, they will not abandon .NET anytime
soon.

------
fleitz
.NET is not going away anytime soon. If anything I feel this further
deprecates silverlight. There is no way that MS expects the majority of apps
to be written in HTML+JS, it's just an option to make it easy for those used
to HTML+JS to write apps on the platform, in the same vein as writing an
HTML+JS app for iPhone. Most serious Windows applications are written in C++
for Win32 anyway, VS which is becoming more and more .NET everyday still has
heavy roots in COM/Win32. Office integration is still best done in C++. No
these apps aren't whats fueling the consumer web but they make big bucks for
the vendors who write them, and ensure platform lockin to Windows as MS tries
to transition away from their desktop monopoly.

MS is not stupid enough to pull another Vista and make apps that used to work
not work. Even if MS were very serious about transitioning everything to
HTML+JS you'd be looking at a 10-15 year timeline. The day you see Office
written in HTML+JS is the day to start worrying if you're a Win32 / .NET app
developer.

------
swix
.NET bleh. HTML5 is the future, cross platform. JavaScript will be made into a
robust language in the coming years, with classes, etc.

The crappy DOM will probably change for the better, HTML5 apps will run as
local apps and tap into the native APIs of the system.

Client = HTML5 + JS , yes we dont need .NET here, where .NET/C/C# and others
will be used, will be in the backend, frontend/client can be perfectly made
with HTML5 + JS.

The only exception is perhaps games and apps such as Photoshop, but 90% of
enterprise stuff that is simply thin clients speaking to a big backend
database+etc can be perfectly made with HTML5.

HTML5 is here to stay, .NET will be the exception. (Games/Heavy backend/3D
apps/Photoshop) sort of things... nothing more.

Or who knows, maybe in the future with WebGL and what not even some more
complicated games can be made just with HTML5.

~~~
crag
I agree with all of this. BUT it'll take a while to get there. .NET will be
around for a long time in the backend.

------
vyrotek
It seems kind of odd that Microsoft would be all in with Azure and then drop
the .Net framework.

------
Gidion
This does remind me of the "no-native-.NET-support" Windows Sidebar attempt.
It failed in the end, but even there one of the first things we did was find a
way to host .NET elements in the sidebar (and it was possible, but you had to
jump through many hoops). We will have to wait and see, but I can't imagine
there will not be a way to host Silverlight in one of the tiles.

Also this whole "every app is going to be html + javascript" does remind me of
the earlies Apple IPhone developer offerings.

------
rbanffy
I can only imagine the turf wars raging right now about this apparent
dichotomy between classic and tiled. I assume my friends there are not having
a very happy day.

------
thedigitalengel
We should have something like GWT that compiles .NET to whatever Microsoft
thinks developers should use.

~~~
tianyicui
For HTML5, we already have one:
<http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html>

~~~
gte525u
That's not exactly a fully supported toolset. There is another C# to js
compiler <http://projects.nikhilk.net/ScriptSharp> which is AFAICT another
side project.

If one of these were to stick - it would first need to be supported be a
somewhat larger organization (ala apache foundation for java components, or
google for GWT/Closure).

------
emp_
The web-based API looks like the Active Channels 2ND attempt, there's nothing
like history to get a glimpse of the future. [1]

[1]: <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768176.aspx>

------
charlieflowers
Microsoft seems to have lost all sense of direction. I just see them launching
a bunch of superficially considered me-too initiatives instead of anything
meaty. They still are the gorilla, but it almost looks like they've given up.
Is it just me?

------
contextfree
fwiw, there are apparently a fair number of newly added .NET-related dlls and
stuff in the leaked Win8 alpha builds.

------
ngranado
you should be able to get all of the .net specific stuff you want via jscript
what is the big deal here?

------
leon_
That shows the risks of vendor lock in. Although I don't believe MS will
replace .NET with html5/js in any regard it shows pretty good why you
shouldn't commit too much to vendor specific/centric technologies.

~~~
JonoW
Based on that logic no one should be building iPhone or iPad apps. You have to
commit to something at some point. The odds of a company ditching a product
they have invested hugely into is probably the same as the odds of an open
technology or framework simply becoming unpopular.

~~~
jcromartie
You can commit to something, for a time, without pushing everything else out
of your brain. I spent quite some time doing iOS development, and it would
certainly not be the end of the world if the entire toolchain changed
tomorrow.

------
chrisjsmith
I don't see what the problem is. It's a logical step and it's better for the
mind than filling it up with .Net APIs.

I think the most vitriolic responses have been from people who have either
been brainwashed by WebForms or never had to do anything on the web before.

------
jcromartie
I don't feel sorry for anybody who invests everything in a single platform.
That is a simple recipe for quickly becoming obsolete.

