Microsoft's development platform today: What you need to know At the Connect event under way in New York, Microsoft laid out its plans for developers targeting its platform – though what the "Microsoft platform" means has changed radically from what it used to be. The slogan today is "Any developer, any app, any platform," whereas a couple of years ago the theme was "Windows everywhere …
* WTF?
* Microsoft staked 123 / WordPerfect through the heart (anti-trust case). Its a paranoid / psychopathic corp. A Facebook / Google like cult 'connecting-the-world'!
* Example: MS views Win-10 snooping as in users best interest. No harm to brand!
*I hold MCSD / MS dev since the 90's. But no more! Future is Linux + Open-Source...
my favourite text editor starts in milliseconds and does not need Windows
It takes a little longer to sharpen my favourite coding pencil, but, once I have, it doesn't even need a computer. On the other hand, it is not always the most productive tool for the job.
"Seems like you can avoid the expense of 1) and 2) by just using Linux in the first place."
ACK, and for commercial GUI-related tools, I understand Qt is pretty good. or you can use (*cough*) Eclipse and gtk. Or just use 'pluma' (gedit's gnome3-ness is irritating for coding) which is what *I* do, and run gdb on an application that displays it's GUI within a VNC X server [so you don't lock the system up debugging a GUI from within X11 - yes, it does do that, but the workaround is sufficient]. There are also GUI wrappers for gdb (at least one really good one). Dunno about Eclipse, though. I find it slow and irritating when I need to do something.
Micro-shaft's IDE *does* make life easier, however, in many (but not ALL ways). It's just that I find porting "their stuff" to Linux to be more work than suffering with "what I just mentioned", line endings and unicode forcing being one of those things. [aka WHY can't Micro-shaft just use UTF-8 like everyone else?]
And yet... even with MSDN subscription and more than one windows 7 computer/VM to code within, I find myself writing just about EVERYTHING either on Linux or FreeBSD, using pluma or an older gedit [that was from gnome 2], command line tools, 'autotools' with configure scripts, yotta yotta. It's so much *cleaner*. Or, the Arduino IDE (for microcontroller stuff).
This is where things went HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY, WRONG.
A couple of quotes from the article:
"Developers who have followed the twists and turns of Microsoft's developer story over the years will know that there are many flavors of XAML"
"There are WPF XAML, Silverlight XAML, and UWP XAML, all different"
sort of like "you are in a twisty little maze of passages, all different" (from a version of RJR Cave that had the batteries in a vending machine within the 'all different' maze).
Did Micro-shaft *MISS* *THE* *BOAT* on this? If we wanted an XML-based UI description, then there's already a simple way of doing it: HTML FORMS. Like web pages, only internal to the application. I'm pretty sure that Webkit has a means for doing this...
There's a somewhat-nice implementation of this for Android. I made use of it once to display a web server's screens as *IF* they were an application running on a slab to control a device. [it was a nice rapid hybrid prototype solution to the problem of getting a GUI on a 'droid slab to control stuff on an Arduino over a serial cable, while displaying live video capture and controlling tests in real time]. The wrapper Android application was pretty simple. All of the work was done on a custom-written Linux web server. [it went into clinical trials that way, being a device associated with certain kinds of eye exams].
So with Java sitting pretty at the top of the TIOBE index for the last SEVERAL YEARS, why is Micro-shaft *BOTHERING* with their C-pound ".Nut" "solution" for cross-platform, with XAM-IT-UP-YOUR-BACKSIDE for GUI screens?
Simple: they want to CONTROL THE DIRECTION for software development. More like DRIVE it, like cattle across the plains, heading for the slaughterhouse. THEN, their PATENT ENCUMBERANCE will keep OTHERS from competing, in THEIR playground, by THEIR rules.
No thanks.
I'm a long time developer with Microsoft's tools, but unlike the linux fanboys here i love them. You don't need a licence for community edition (which is really good these days), and complaining about the £70 or so I spent on an OS 5 years ago seems a little tight. Yes, yes, privacy corcerns etc, they have been pricks about that and the upgrade process.
But Xamarin forms ...... oh my .... the only positive thing to say about the experience was that it's better than titanium. But then so is whipping up an app in machine code.
Hello Microsoft. This is the barn door. See how you left it open for so long while you spent all of that time building, tearing down, and rebuilding all of your teeny-tiny little fenced-in paddocks? Do you see any horses still milling about? Do you see any cows? Pigs? Chickens? Nope. All wandered off YEARS ago to greener pastures.
If you wanted people to use you for multiplatform, then you probably should have, you know, done something useful about that. At least one decade ago when you were already losing those sales in droves. Maybe two, if you were paying any attention at all. Three would have actually been innovating.
But good luck catching some new horses. I'm sure there must be some still wandering the wilds that you can lure in. What's that? You have a sugar cube. Yeah. I'm sure that'll do the trick.
By the way, that barn door of yours is still open...
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