*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).
> This is what happens when developers believe blindly in promises,
Actually, this is what happens when you rely on software someone else controls. I once worked in a company that (after I left) made a huge investment in WebClasses, as they "were the future" of web development on Microsoft platforms. "The Future", as often happens, didn't last long.
Microsoft hasn't clearly ditched neither .NET (and .NET permeates most of Microsoft's server business) nor Silverlight and the "classic" view will still be there for when it makes sense (and it really does in a lot of scenarios). I suspect, however, "modern" apps will prefer to use the cleaner tile interface. If things like Gmail and Google Docs taught us something, is that simple interfaces are a good idea. With the onslaught of fresh desktop GUI ideas like Apple's full-screen apps, Gnome's new shell, and Canonical's Unity, Microsoft had to show something.
And that's what damns them. When a competitor, any competitor, shows something, they make themselves show something like it. Frankly, this whole tile thing has "PDC 2003" written all over it.
this is what happens when you rely on software
someone else controls
True, but you invariably depend on somebody else to write the software you want.
For the web, you depend on the industry to evolve towards your specific needs. Client-side, you depend on whichever company controls the operating-system of the devices you're trying to target.
I wanted to mention open-source platforms when writing that comment, but in this specific context it isn't really useful, since that's not what .NET developers seek. They want Windows, Visual Studio, commercial support and a unified platform for the web, client and mobile (the promise of .NET), which is insane as there can be no such thing.
> True, but you invariably depend on somebody else to write the software you want.
Not really. When Zope Corporation ceased to develop Zope 2 in favor of Zope 3, the Plone community and others continued development of the 2 series. It currently has a lot of features migrated from the 3 series, a lot of new features of its own, but remains compatible with the Plone CMS that runs on its top.
If, for whatever implausible reason, Oracle decides to ditch MySQL, its users already have a bunch of forks in place, perfectly functional. If, however, Oracle decides to discontinue their RDBMS, its users are royally screwed.
> and a unified platform for the web, client and mobile (the promise of .NET), which is insane as there can be no such thing.
Despite my dislike for Java (the language), I have to recognize it spans a very vast space, from dumbphones (J2ME) to fairly clever ones (CLDC, CDC) to very smart ones (Android) to desktops (Eclipse, NetBeans, several standalone development tools I use) to large distributed server solutions (Cassandra, Mule, Hadoop). And the JVM is sweet. I'd love to find a decent excuse to do something in Clojure on it.
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.
You're partially right. But I'd draw your attention to this part of the article...
"Underlying the discussion is that developers have clients, and clients want applications that run on a platform with a future. Currently, Microsoft is promoting HTML and JavaScript as the future for Windows applications, putting every client-side .NET developer at a disadvantage in those pitches."
Remember most MS developers work in corporate environments. Either in companies or as consultants. No one wants to spend money to build a "legacy" app. So when Microsoft says HTML5 apps are the future but doesn't lay out how their APIs are going to work it freezes many .NET developers in their tracks. Because now Silverlight and WPF are legacy but you don't know how to pitch these new Windows 8 apps to a client because Microsoft hasn't specified how they'll work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
otoh, since the new app platform is based on IE10, it will have the new CSS3 grid module which seriously solves about half of the day-to-day problems I have with web front-end development.
It's not like you won't be able to use .NET - they are just adding IE9 into the equation
Exactly. I write a lot of .net code for work and haven't written a UI in anything other than HTML/JS in a long time. Too many people seem to be reading HTML/JS and thinking entire apps will now have to be written in them, and I just don't that's true.
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).