Windows Runtime internals: understanding "Hello World"

An absolutely great overview of the internals of WinRT.  A must for any COM developer from yesteryear so as to understand how COM has evolved.

I was really excited about Windows 8 until I saw this. I feel like I've just stepped back in time 20 years. COM, oops, WintRT! I thought we had moved away from the registry and all of those nightmares. When watching this video you can't help but feel concerned that this is a step backwards.

OMG - welcome back to the 90s. Registry, COM, blah blah

Obviously some political infight was won by somebody that thinks that .net is a toy and now the real programmers get to rule the roost again.

Ironic that I am watching this using SL - a now dead technology

Also I saw this 'using winrt from c#' presentation where a guy proudly went - 'now we can access the web cam from c# without using p/invoke - applause please'. All us SL devs went - huh? We have had that for ages

You left out the part where WinRT will prevent the owner of the computer from installing the Metro applications of their choice.

It does seem like a moronic anachronism. WTF has nobody at MS learnt the cost of these chatty interfaces? Jusr start a process and keep a function pointer to talk to it. Call it with all the information you have. Once. Boom. WinRT process activation in 5 minutes and ten lines of code. You're welcome!

Consistent WinRT API - Excellent
WinRT Projections - Excellent
Metro style UI - Excellent
Touch - Excellent
Cross hardware architecture - Excellent

Registering apps in the Registry - Crazy
Not being able to just run an app without Microsofts permission - Disaster

If app registration happens in HKCU, how do you prevent a desktop app from corrupting or injecting an exploit of the metro apps?

please, next time Matt asks for a 2-hour slot for his talk, GIVE IT TO HIM!

Wow, very nice talk! I really enjoyed the details. I wish you had gotten that 2 hour slot you wanted :)

If anyone is looking for the debug tool I used in this presentation, a non-Microsoft sponsored codeplex project has been started that is hosting such a tool, you can find it here:

http://winrt.codeplex.com

Or you can write your own using the IPackageDebugSettings interface.

Awesome, nice, deeeeeeeeep debugging techniques that really helped me to understand how things are really happening under the covers.

@Russell Ditto. It was such a disappointment to learn that the new app model is just lipstick on the COM pig. I guess the "re-imagining" is only skin deep. I had dreams of app deployment being a simple file copy with the entire app and its configuration existing in a file folder rather than being scattered throughout the registry. I guess we'll be stuck with this COM mess as long as the 10 people in the universe who still think the registry and DCOM activation are a good idea are still building Windows.

@pm100 Well, SL is coded in C++. No wonder it could provide you with Webcam access through a proxy.

You people should really stop bashing COM for your inability to use it properly. Heck, even Apple adopted the idea and its working well.