It would seem more and more software platform companies are giving into HTML5 and Javascript. Although on the surface this appears to be a good thing, that is an platform using open standards built upon a such a pervasive technology (the web browser), I can't help but feel like this is a mistake which is going to take developers a VERY long time to get over.

Javascript isn't the most developer friendly technology out there, by a long shot. It lacks many OO features (inheritance, polymorpism, properties and indexers etc) which I personally want and almost demand when I zen into my programming sessions. A lot of people have a problem with this too and have created language translators. Google recently announced Dart, there is a neat compiler/language I've used called Haxe [4, 5], and heard there's even an open source C# to Javascipt tool available (which I haven't tried).

But fixing the problem of complex HTML5 development by converting other more featured languages to Javascript is half the problem. And the lesser half. The real problem with HTML5 is the incomplete, incompatible, and poor performing implementations. This is the part that's going to stymie the regular software developer for a VERY long time.

The animation system is HTML5 is still undergoing changes. Some browsers are exposing a method for requesting the next frame, but their names are different and they pass different information back to you application regarding timing. Some browsers are using open standards to expose hardware accelerated graphic effects [6] while other are not. The audio/video API have differences, including what formats to accept. The 2D drawing APIs are quite slow on some browsers, and horribly slow on others. And then there are the usual problems with differences in Javascript access to a browser's DOM. I could go on and on here ...

I'd love it if someday there were a unified development platform for all devices, but am opposed to using HTML5 as the answer now.

1. http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/9/2548975/microsoft-may-halt-development-work-on-silverlight-after-next-release
2. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/will-there-be-a-silverlight-6-and-does-it-matter/11180
3. http://www.freep.com/article/20111109/COL41/111109013/Adobe-kills-Flash-mobile-devices?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE
4. http://codebot.org/haxe/
5. http://haxe.org/
6. http://www.iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy/

You cannot give developers a nice technology and take it away and then expect them to flop over to HTML5/Javascript.   Someone else will fill this gap and if it is not Microsoft then they will start hurting.  Maybe Microsoft becomes the next Kodak where it thinks its king and film will last forever.

Link explaining <time>/<data> change:
http://html5doctor.com/time-and-data-element/

And I'l REALLY not looking forward to building large LOB applications in HTML5/JQuery. All it's going to do is increase costs.

You cannot give developers a nice technology and take it away and then expect them to flop over to HTML5/Javascript.   Someone else will fill this gap and if it is not Microsoft then they will start hurting.  Maybe Microsoft becomes the next Kodak where it thinks its king and film will last forever.

In fairness, in most cases they expect them to flop over to WinRT, which is still XAML, which is the biggest learning curve for Silverlight anyway. What's gonna happen on the web, of course, is anyone's guess.

Anyway, I still think there's something else to it. With all the rumors that they're about to push Silverlight to the Xbox it seems unlikely that they'd simultaneously pull the plug.

"WinRT - with Windows 8 Lock-in (tm)"

Really? I got a personal message from Steve Balmer that developers are Microsoft's highest priority. I guess I didn't get his retraction. I'll check my inbox right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE

That's something Microsoft could pursue for a possible future of Silverlight... if Silverlight was ever adopted by the indie web gaming community, but it wasn't, so therefore Silverlight has no future.

I saw this happening when Silverlight was first announced in 2005 (search for my posts on this very forum) I'm just surprised Microsoft kept it running as long as they did - but I suppose the size of the developer community was too large to kill it off recently, is it now falling such that they can end the product without too many protests?

Though I think Silverlight was the natural extension of WPF, which in turn was supposed to be Microsoft's next generation Windows user interface toolkit. WPF/E (E is for everywhere) turned into Silverlight and then interest turned to parity between WPF and Silverlight. For whatever reason (maybe the success of touch interfaces and iPhone/iPad/Android)  Microsoft decided to leave behind both WPF and Silverlight and focus instead on HTML5 and maybe optionally salvaging the XAML notion in Windows 8. But you can be sure, it won't be WPF. It'll be something else entirely (WinRT).

And a note about Windows Phone 7 ... true story:

I went to my local Walmart super center the other day. They have a mobile phone store inside. They looked at me funny when I asked if they sell a WP7 phone the other day. The answer is no. I was at my local super mall yesterday where they have three phone stores: Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and Radio Shack (hey, they sell phones too!). None of them had a WP7 in their store.  The Verizon store said they could order one for me, but that they don't carry them in store. When I asked when the manager said because they bounce back. When I asked what he meant by bounce back he said when they sold them customer would be them back and return them for a non WP7 phone.

Kinda sad for Microsoft.

1 hour ago, sysrpl wrote

...

The animation system is HTML5 is still undergoing changes. Some browsers are exposing a method for requesting the next frame, but their names are different and they pass different information back to you application regarding timing. Some browsers are using open standards to expose hardware accelerated graphic effects [6] while other are not. The audio/video API have differences, including what formats to accept. The 2D drawing APIs are quite slow on some browsers, and horribly slow on others. And then there are the usual problems with differences in Javascript access to a browser's DOM. I could go on and on here ...

...

My friend, I understand that you are unhappy about this but FUD-ing HTML/HTML5/JAVASCRIPT/CSS will not bring your beloved Silverlight back (if it was even alive sometime).

Other then to look to Microsoft what are you doing about it? There is a LONG list of open projects for various aspects of dealing with browser quirks (none came from Microsoft, many came from Google). Look up shims and libraries.

A small, and not that complete, example is SVGWEB.

I never said I was a fan of Silverlight. Yes, I'd dug into it, but that doesn't mean I bought into it. My "problem" is with the wasted development months/years companies like Adobe and Microsoft as experiencing. Not only with their own development teams/dollars, of their developer and vendor base.

This is part of the reason people hate Microsoft so much, and part of the reason their losing developers and partners (like the partners who helped Microsoft release the Kin). Businesses and developers now more than ever loath to hitch themselves to Microsoft. It's at the point now where almost no amount of Microsoft goodwill can surmount the negative experiences Microsoft has brought them. They pissed off Intel [1], netbook makers [2], programmers [3] ... the list would be large.

About what I am doing about it? Well I've been using Haxe some and will continue to write software which uses OpenGL, which I've been doing for about ten years now. I'll also probably tell the business I work with not to nest too much into Microsoft related technologies. I'll steer them away from developing SharePoint systems. Finally I'm going to do more Android development when the Asus Transformer Prime ships next month with ICS.

1. Intel Paperweight
2. Microsoft releases maximum netbook specs
3. Visual Fred

1 hour ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

For those you you who are HTML/Javascript gurus I mean no offence.

*snip*

I see that the atrocious spelling of the Brits in this forum has started to rub off on the Merkans.

1 hour ago, sysrpl wrote

@DeathByVisualStudio: "Developers are a dime a dozen to Microsoft."

Really? I got a personal message from Steve Balmer that developers are Microsoft's highest priority. I guess I didn't get his retraction. I'll check my inbox right now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE

 

Enjoy that pat on the head.

Quantity is always better than quality...

Going by the past form Microsoft, I am going to be very cautious, it is only a few years until iOS and Android become full blown operating systems. Microsoft are quite a risky company to develop for for the first time in their history.

I am looking to develop a Win phone 7 application soon, but the underlying tech is (allegedly) losing support, that makes Win phone 7 insane to choose as a development platform, if this turns out to be true, Microsoft have effectively killed Windows Phone, I won't touch it with a bargepole.

Shooting Range should be a good place to start - as soon as I can get my hands on a tablet that includes the relevant sensors (I didn't go to Build)

Happy Days ...

26 minutes ago, vesuvius wrote

I am looking to develop a Win phone 7 application soon, but the underlying tech is (allegedly) losing support, that makes Win phone 7 insane to choose as a development platform, if this turns out to be true, Microsoft have effectively killed Windows Phone, I won't touch it with a bargepole.

WinRT is, by and large, Silverlight with the fundamental dependency on the CLR stripped out, some tidying up of the application lifecycle model and a stripping out some of the synchronous behaviours in favour of pushing dev tools that can seemlessly make the asynchronous just as easy to use. The big deal of porting between the two on the PC is really having to redesign the UI to fit Metro, which is a non-issue on WP7 because it's been Metro since day one.

17 minutes ago, Bass wrote

I don't really agree with your characterization of JavaScript not having inheritance or polymorphism.

JavaScript has instance inheritance, but not type inheritance. The generic term "polymorphism" is usually associated with subtype polymorphism.

Windows Phone needs to be a platform that people can build on for the next 5 years at least, but I know if I make the jump, the tectonic plates will be moved, it is just not acceptable, when I look at how much it costs to develop products at get them to a bug free stage.

Depending on the application, porting code is just not an option, especially when we are dealing with calibrated software. There seems to still be vacillation in Microsoft with regard to their current and future UI platforms, that increases the risk of using any of their software, it is now riddled with risk and unproven

I won't touch or even buy a windows phone, until the next version is announced.

So will SL & WPF apps but their run under the legacy desktop. Balmer has a solid commitment to backwards compatibility but not necessarily providing the best experience.

It might not "light up" as well on future devices, but the same was true of iPhone apps when the iPad came out and that was from Apple, who have hardly a long history of worrying too much about breaking backcompat or annoying devs.

29 minutes ago, AndyC wrote

*snip*

It might not "light up" as well on future devices, but the same was true of iPhone apps when the iPad came out and that was from Apple, who have hardly a long history of worrying too much about breaking backcompat or annoying devs.

So it's a good thing that Microsoft is acting more and more like Apple? Screw backward compat and the developers. That's great news Andy.

26 minutes ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*@AndyC:

So it's a good thing that Microsoft is acting more and more like Apple? Screw backward compat and the developers. That's great news Andy.

Well they haven't really. Moving a "Metro" Silverlight project to WinRT requires very little effort at all and can easily be absorbed into an upgrade release schedule - it's not like you have to do a major re-write or change the language or anything. And from an end-user perspective, it doesn't matter as long as everything still runs as it did before. Some apps won't make the best use of my phone, but heck that's true of some of the original WP7 apps that haven't been updated to enable Mango specific features too.

In the grand scheme of things though, not caring so much about a breaking change here and now, when the userbase is relatively small, is a far more sensible decision than being lumbered carrying the burden of supporting software that you had the option to drop at an early stage with minimal impact (whether that be Silverlight, WinCE or whatever).

This is a wild idea of course, I have no idea if this is possible.

if you swim against the current,

you will just stay in one place,

so,

I'm going to learn C++ and dev me some awesome apps in WinRT!

And when they cancel that, I'll jump on the next bandwagon!

I love my job

Once you have an application of reasonable complexity, that you employed people offshore or the experts that wrote the application have moved on, you don't want to have to revisit that code to port it, it becomes very expensive.

When I look at my other developers, Android, iOS, Blackberry and OSX, they make a worthwhile investment for developing products, which also comes with job security, and higher demand and money because you actually get to be an expert at something.

As a development platform, Microsoft are not invest-able as they will jump ship at any point. If Win 8 lacks adoption like Vista - a distinct possibility - where do you end up as a developer, that invested in WPF, Silverlight, Win phone and WinRT?

You end up staying in one place Maddus, one of failed runtimes and application frameworks.

I'm going to put on my batsuit,..

All kidding aside, this is the fastest changing industry in the world. It's either get on board, or get out. I find it very challenging and it keeps my job fun!

I let the managers worry about the costs and the implications, it's not like .Net is going away anytime soon, so don't worry so much about it.

Herbie

16 hours ago, AndyC wrote

*snip*

Well they haven't really. Moving a "Metro" Silverlight project to WinRT requires very little effort at all and can easily be absorbed into an upgrade release schedule - it's not like you have to do a major re-write or change the language or anything.

Oversimplifying once again... If you're speaking of lightweight WP7 apps then you may be right but anything on the desktop isn't going to be like the magical port demos you've seen in the build sessions.

@vesuvius:

I couldn't agree with you more.

With the W8 lock-in under WinRT if it fails (and specifically the WinRT/Metro side of the house) those that have written apps for it will be in the same spot as the WP7 guys. It won't matter how many copies of W8 are sold (for use of the desktop side or just because that's what ships on new machines) WinRT and it's fledgling apps will fail in their own right if Microsoft can't figure out how to get people demanding WinRT/Metro apps. The Zune, Kin, and now WP7 are great examples of what could happen to WinRT/Metro. It would stand a better chance if they'd back port it to W7 or had forged it as a SL strategy in the first place rather than building this phone OS runtime bolt-on into Windows.

The other piece that's going to be an issue is that the talented developers I've worked with never want to work in "legacy" code. Now that WPF/SL is legacy it's going to be harder to get good devs who want to do the work. Even if WinRT/Metro is a fail there are other places these devs can go now as you've mentioned.

3 hours ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

Oversimplifying once again... If you're speaking of lightweight WP7 apps then you may be right but anything on the desktop isn't going to be like the magical port demos you've seen in the build sessions.

My comments were in the context of Silverlight development for WP7, desktop applications for the PC are obviously a whole different ballgame.

To date nobody at Microsoft has had the cojones to stand up and answer this truthfully. It is almost a case of if you keep telling yourself a lie, you will eventually start to believe it?

I think I have said enough in this forum, and don't intend to keep sounding like a broken record, I feel I am the sort of guy that could make WinRT fly, but now view the company that I championed for so many years negatively, and in true form they don't really care.

Anyway, I have said my piece.

1 hour ago, AndyC wrote

*snip*

My comments were in the context of Silverlight development for WP7, desktop applications for the PC are obviously a whole different ballgame.

Nice of you to leave that bit out. Andy you're the master of obscuring the truth to make your points seem valid. Now maybe you don't do it on purpose but you do. That's why it's pointless to have a dialog with you.

Back in the day I could write programs in GW-Basic or Pascal.  If I tried to write anything in those languages today I would be laughed at.  Change is necessary.

The only constant in the technology is change (and fast change at that).  If that is a problem then maybe it is time to look at a new career.

it is all well to say that you will move on when the next thing comes along, but I have a sense of responsibility for my customers, and think if they spend millions on a project, I want them to continue to extract value from the decisions I took in electing the software used. I am not in the business of selling people dead horses

8 minutes ago, vesuvius wrote

it is all well to say that you will move on when the next thing comes along, but I have a sense of responsibility for my customers, and think if they spend millions on a project, I want them to continue to extract value from the decisions I took in electing the software used. I am not in the business of selling people dead horses

Damn straight!

7 minutes ago, vesuvius wrote

@JeremyJ: You will do with Microsoft at the moment, you will be looking for a new career every two or three years, as I have said I have Android, iOS, OSX and Windows developers, and the non Microsoft products seems to be the best bet, because people can invest in them, without the underlying technology changing every two minutes, like WPF and Silverlight especially has. There is a lot of smoke and mirrors being used at Microsoft, and no firm commitments.

Is this so true with Android or iOS? Silverlight has been around as long as iOS has, and Android, while purchased by Google in 2005, wasn't available to developers until 2007, the same year Silverlight was introduced. If you are to look at Silverlight as of today, it's been at least as stable as both iOS or Android.

If you want firm commitments, has Google said anything about what's going to happen if Oracle wins its lawsuit against them? Did they say they'd be willing to bite the bullet and pay a licensing fee to Oracle to keep Android the way it is?

I can run Visual Studio 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2010 all side by side to support old applications if I wish.  You may not develop new applications using technology you know will be coming to an end, but that doesn't stop you from maintaining your existing applications for your customers.  I think it is just silly to say that Microsoft keeps changing directions every 2-3 years.  It reallys hasn't changed direction since 2002 (almost a decade) when .NET came out.  It has slowly evolved into more powerful development tools.  That is all that is happening today. 

I find it funny that people start complaining because Microsoft was so slow to keep up with changing techology (like staying with IE6 for so long).  They were getting left behind and are suffering the consequences of that.  Now they are trying to be more responsive to the changing technology landscape and people are complaining that they are moving too fast.

Silverlight has not been privy to any lawsuit and is as alive as a dodo bird, plus the fact that Android and iOS have changed the rules of the game by actually being successful.

Microsoft have shot themselves in the foot, I don't need to waste my time, in arguments over issues where is is widely acknowledge that Microsoft have lacked cohesion. If I had to have a report by you into software it would be

1. Use Microsoft for everything
2. They have never made a mistake
3. They never will make a mistake
4. Every mistake they made turned out not to be a mistake
5. Not using Microsoft is a mistake
6. Everyone else is a shill for liking and using iOs or Android

You form a basis for the soundest reasoning in your arguments, even when Microsoft are making mistakes you are there pretending its not true, even if the complaining is coming from disgruntled windows developers that have been developing on the platform for years. I know what I am talking about, and scarcely require ratification, remonstration or repudiation. Your argument is just a way to comfort your obsequiousness, that's all.

Even if you don't like the vendor's vision, you are forced to go along because you invested too much in the vendor's vision to pull out.  This reason you people are so frustrated is because of a phenomenon called vendor lock in.

You might have invested in proprietary technologies because they looked to be more productive or less expensive than open source, but you did not consider the hidden costs. The solution to vendor lock in is to move to open platforms like Linux.

5 minutes ago, JeremyJ wrote

@vesuvius: Just because a language is not supported in the future doesn't mean that the software you wrote for them will automatically stop working.  They are paying for a product.  You deliver them a product.  You make no guarantees that that product will last forever.  That is like saying that I paid a lot of money for Photoshop 1.0.  It should always work no matter what the future holds.  That just isn't realistic.  I wrote software in C++ 17 years ago that will still run even though it was using old tools and an old version of the language.

If you read Tim Sneaths blog, they said their were taking a heavy bet on WPF as a platform, as it is the whole of WPF is crippled with a performance bug, and lacks a lot of features that were promised the language from Microsoft indicated they would invest in it for quite some time, even moving Visual Studio to it, that was what made a lot of people think it was a safe bet.

I can run Visual Studio 2003, 2005, 2008, and 2010 all side by side to support old applications if I wish.  You may not develop new applications using technology you know will be coming to an end, but that doesn't stop you from maintaining your existing applications for your customers.  I think it is just silly to say that Microsoft keeps changing directions every 2-3 years.  It reallys hasn't changed direction since 2002 (almost a decade) when .NET came out.  It has slowly evolved into more powerful development tools.  That is all that is happening today. 

I am not quite sure we are living in the same universe, Winforms and WPF and Silverlight are all client focused frameworks, where they have changed direction in their client frameworks. Are you suggesting these are all the same and aligned with WinRT?

I find it funny that people start complaining because Microsoft was so slow to keep up with changing techology (like staying with IE6 for so long).  They were getting left behind and are suffering the consequences of that.  Now they are trying to be more responsive to the changing technology landscape and people are complaining that they are moving too fast.

I think you are dreaming again there - possibly a deep sleep. They are playing catch up, big time, both in tablets and phones. The key is in your wording i.e. responsive and not proactive. Microsoft could have created an iOS or Phone ages ago, they have always had products in these markets, but lacked the vision and cohesion to ignite the markets

This won't earn me fans, but I am not part of a clan nor do I want to to be. Microsoft make some great products, but so do other people as well.

Er, let's look at that shall we:

1 day ago, AndyC wrote

@vesuvius:Steve Ballmer went on stage at BUILD and said very clearly that any app written for WP7 will continue to run on WP8 and 9 and future version of the phone OS. I'm not sure there can be a more solid commitment than that.

1 day ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

@AndyC:

So will SL & WPF apps but their run under the legacy desktop. Balmer has a solid commitment to backwards compatibility but not necessarily providing the best experience.

23 hours ago, AndyC wrote

*snip*

Well they haven't really. Moving a "Metro" Silverlight project to WinRT requires very little effort at all and can easily be absorbed into an upgrade release schedule - it's not like you have to do a major re-write or change the language or anything. And from an end-user perspective, it doesn't matter as long as everything still runs as it did before. Some apps won't make the best use of my phone, but heck that's true of some of the original WP7 apps that haven't been updated to enable Mango specific features too.

Three posts in a row, both of mine explicitly mentioning WP7 based on the comment vesuvius made on not moving to WP7 development until WP8 comes out in case things change. And I'm obscuring the truth?

I'm part of the MTV generation and even my attention span isn't quite that short!

34 minutes ago, vesuvius wrote

*snip*

If you read Tim Sneaths blog, they said their were taking a heavy bet on WPF as a platform, as it is the whole of WPF is crippled with a performance bug, and lacks a lot of features that were promised the language from Microsoft indicated they would invest in it for quite some time, even moving Visual Studio to it, that was what made a lot of people think it was a safe bet.

I have never said that Microsoft was infallible.  I personally never used WPF because I didn't feel it was the right tool for the jobs that I was working on (I have used Silverlight though).  Even if I did use it for my projects, they would continue to work even after Microsoft stopped supporting it.  I would also be able to maintain the code by using the tools they were built in.  Future technology does not make someone's choice of using WPF a bad decision because it still achieved their goal.

*snip*

I am not quite sure we are living in the same universe, Winforms and WPF and Silverlight are all client focused frameworks, where they have changed direction in their client frameworks. Are you suggesting these are all the same and aligned with WinRT?

I think what we are seeing is the beginning of unifying a lot of seperate technologies into a single framework.  Instead of having to decide between 3 or 4 different technologies you will now have a one-stop-shop that will be able to handle all of the different scenarios.  I will admit though that I haven't researched too much on WinRT.  I tend to wait until things hit public beta before I spend too much time with it.

*snip*

I think you are dreaming again there - possibly a deep sleep. They are playing catch up, big time, both in tablets and phones. The key is in your wording i.e. responsive and not proactive. Microsoft could have created an iOS or Phone ages ago, they have always had products in these markets, but lacked the vision and cohesion to ignite the markets

If I were to make a prediction about the future, I would say that the web is going to take on a more app based approach and less of a web page based approach.  Similar to how phones and tablets are working now.  If this proves to be true, then ditching the old web page approach and moving to an app approach does seem proactive to me.  I feel that the wild west days of the internet are numbered.  I think people like more content focused apps instead of having to search endlessly trying to find what they are looking for.  I am sure a lot of people (especially techie people) will disagree, but seeing the explosive growth of smartphones and tablets proves people want that.

1 hour ago, AndyC wrote

@DeathByVisualStudio:

Er, let's look at that shall we:

*snip**snip**snip*

Three posts in a row, both of mine explicitly mentioning WP7 based on the comment vesuvius made on not moving to WP7 development until WP8 comes out in case things change. And I'm obscuring the truth?

I'm part of the MTV generation and even my attention span isn't quite that short!

Your right Andy and I apologize.

As I've said before it would be refreshing if you'd man up and admit when you're wrong. You are hardly innocent of missing context yourself.

5 hours ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

Your right Andy and I apologize.

As I've said before it would be refreshing if you'd man up and admit when you're wrong. You are hardly innocent of missing context yourself.

Always willing to do so, please do feel free to let me know if I've missed something. Like I said, MTV generation, attention-span of a goldfish and all that.

Here ya go: http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/How-long-will-Windows-8-the-terrible-last-Any-bets/04cee3da8fcc465fa2209f950036d3ef

Here's another: http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/How-long-will-Windows-8-the-terrible-last-Any-bets/bf53a44650e94697b6419f98005e1fae

While you may disagree with my argument you didn't address the fact that you spun my argument into something unrelated in order to try and validate your point. I called you on it and you played twister rather than manning up to what you did. It's ok Andy; Glenn Beck used to do that too on Fox News in order to make his points and they actually paid him to do that. Maybe you have another career calling you.

Herbie

Can we move on now?

Sure.

Now that Dr. Herbie on the other hand...   kidding...