Windows 8 Xaml/C# Apps

Let me see if I can make sense of this...

If you want to build a Windows 8 application, you need to target the WinRT runtime or no runtime at all. Targeting WinRT will of course give you access to the platform features, where targeting no runtime at all will not (basically you would create an application that can run on its own but not do anything really interesting). So, in the interest of keeping this conversation topical, let's consider a Windows 8 application an application that target Windows 8 features, hence WinRT.

Now, you can choose the way you target WinRT. You can use the "managed way", with C#, XAML, C++, or you can use the "web way" with JavaScript, HTML and CSS. All these technologies are first citizens in the Windows 8 app model.

When you build a PhoneGap application, you're not targeting Windows Phone or iOS or Android or Blackberry. You target the PhoneGap runtime. And you can target that by using JavaScript, HTML and CSS, but just because you're using "standard" technologies, it doesn't mean that your PhoneGap app will run, say, in FireFox. It will run in the PhoneGap managed runtime.

Same thing for Windows 8. Even if you use JS/HTML/CSS, it doesn't mean that your app will run in any browser. Unless it's a very trivial app, it will use *something* from the underlying platform and will, by this, be platform dependent.

So, making the "web way" a first citizen in the Windows 8 app model is not the same as saying that a Windows 8 app developed in this manner will be usable (or even meaningful) in an arbitrary browser. Even using prefectly standard JS/HTML/CSS, if an app targets WinRT, it is a Windows 8 app.

IIRC, for Metro-style apps, you cannot creating any reusable assemblies using JavaScript, so all of your JavaScript code is limited to what is either contained in a script elements of your HTML files or .js files that belong to the application proper.

IMO, JavaScript support is to flatten the learning curve for non-.NET developers, but the ultimate goal is to get them to develop in a CLR language.

@cbae:

you cannot creating any reusable assemblies using JavaScript

You can't reuse javascript that depends on WinRT in other projects, you are still free to create code that runs everywhere. It's not like ALL javascript isn't reusable. Just the portion that relies on WinRT.

It's the old tradeoff of reach vs. rich.

12 hours ago, cbae wrote

IMO, JavaScript support is to flatten the learning curve for non-.NET developers

Well, this is where it fails, as the learning curve is worse than anything I've worked on the last 14 years of using Microsoft technologies. Xaml/C# should have been the desired inroads for all devs...except those needing the C++ route of course.

7 minutes ago, Harlequin wrote

*snip*

the learning curve is worse than anything I've worked on the last 14 years of using Microsoft technologies.

Well, it fits the target audience, since the Javascript/CSS/HTML hodgepodge is one of the worst programming paradigms ever.

17 minutes ago, Charles wrote

@cbae: The point of supporting multiple - and very different - programming paradigms is so that huge numbers of developers DON'T need to learn new languages/tools to build Windows apps.... I'm not sure how or why this isn't getting across.

C

That may be the intent, but as I mentioned, you really can't design your apps in any intelligent manner incorporating "separation of concerns" principles since you aren't able to create assemblies (i.e. class libraries) using JavaScript. You have to learn one of the manage languages supported by .NET or use C++.